The first set of documents containing Coptic is that of the Melian monastery of Hathôr, in the Cynopolite or Héracléopolite nome, known from the archives of Apa Paiêous (c. 330-340), and those of his successor, direct or otherwise, Nepherôs (c. 360-370). The former contain 10 letters, of which 6 are in Greek and 4 in Coptic; the latter 26 letters, of which 24 are in Greek and 2 in Coptic (legal and administrative documents are all in Greek). The balance between the two languages is still very much in favor of Greek. The question that arises is whether we can perceive a reason why a particular letter writer would use one language rather than another - apart from his linguistic limitations. It's not very clear. The Apa Paiêous archives give us the impression that Greek letters tend to deal with important subjects or present rhetorical supplications, whereas Coptic letters, conversely, tend to revolve around more concrete and trivial subjects - despite a few exceptions. If we can therefore guess at a form of language specialization according to the content of the letters and consequently their purpose - specialization which bears witness to the overwhelming weight of the Greek model when it comes to involving rhetoric - it is above all the bilingualism of the actors in this dossier that shines through in the letters that make it up. Copt speakers are well versed in Greek and the phraseology that Christianity has developed in this language. The result is a community that is relatively at ease in both languages, where ethnicity does not confine the individual to a single language.
These conclusions also apply to other groups, such as the fifteen or so Coptic letters extracted from the bindings of the Gnostic codices at Nag Hammadi, which undoubtedly originated in a monastic environment and partly revolve around the monk Sansnôs; the letters from Douch (11 identified texts dating from 350-400); and the only Coptic letter from Aïn Waqfa (a village site), all of which were found at the same time as a larger quantity of Greek texts. It was also in the Dakhla oasis of Kellis that the largest collection of ancient Coptic texts was found (355,380), again mixed with Greek texts and partly from a Manichaean milieu. By its sheer size (207 texts listed, including 199 letters, compared with 450 Greek documents), this dossier, recently discovered and in the process of being published, is of outstanding interest for the history of the emergence of Coptic in a non-monastic environment, and sheds new light on the profile of the first users of Coptic in the field of everyday life.
