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In seventeenth-century Europe the Copts, or the Egyptian members of the Church of Alexandria, were widely believed to hold the key to an ancient wisdom and an ancient theology. Their language was thought to lead to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs and their Church to retain traces of early Christian practices as well as early Egyptian customs. Now available in paperback for the first time, this first, full-length study of the subject, discusses the attempts of Catholic missionaries to force the Church of Alexandria into union with the Church of Rome and the slow accumulation of knowledge of Coptic beliefs, undertaken by Catholics and Protestants. It ends with a survey of the study of the Coptic language in the West and of the uses to which it was put by Biblical scholars, antiquarians, theologians, and Egyptologists.

The eleven articles in this book seek to document the interest in the Levant that prevailed in the Republic of Letters from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century. The emphasis is on those collectors of manuscripts and antiquaries who either travelled in the Middle East (the Vecchietti brothers, John Greaves and Patrick Russell) or who, remaining in Europe, acted through agents and correspondents – scholars such as Peiresc, John Selden and Robert Boyle. But themes such as the discussion prompted by European translations of the Quran and by scholarly enterprises in the East (such as the Mutaferrika printing press in Istanbul) also come to the fore in a volume which contributes to the history of oriental studies in early modern Europe.Contributors include: Maurits H. van den Boogert, Alastair Hamilton, Charles G.D. Littleton, Peter N. Miller, Hannah Neudecker, Francis Richard, Jan Schmidt, Zur Shalev, and G.J. Toomer.