the sea if they are near them, otherwise a tank in the narthex of the church (p. 267).[1] Holy Week begins with "Osanna Sunday," when they have a service and procession of palms (which do not lack in Egypt). On Good Friday ("Great Friday") there is a symbolic burial of a crucifix, like the Byzantine (
Greek characters) rite.[2]
We have noted that the chief interests in the Coptic Church are its memories and its archæology. Its heresy is no longer of acute importance even to Copts themselves. It is maintained by a kind of inertia, because it was so long a national patriotic cause. Nor has a small local sect in one country any great practical importance to-day. But the memories of the old Church of Egypt give it a dignity not shared by many larger and more prosperous Churches in the West. These memories cling wonderfully still to their services, customs, buildings. The Orthodox Church keeps alive the palmy days of the Eastern Empire, from Justinian to 1453. But the ghosts which hover around Coptic altars are older than this. Perhaps nowhere in the world can you imagine yourself back in so remote an age as when you are in a Coptic church. You go into a strange dark building; at first the European needs an effort to realize that it is a church at all, it looks so different from our usual associations. But it is enormously older than the clustered columns, moulded arches and glowing clerestory, than the regular aisles and balanced chapels to which we are accustomed. In a Coptic church you come into low dark spaces, a labyrinth of irregular openings. There is little light from the narrow windows. Dimly you see strange rich colours and tarnished gold, all mellowed by dirt.[3] In loops from the vault above hang ropes bearing the white ostrich eggs, and lamps sparkle in the gloom. Before you is the exquisite carving, inlay in delicate patterns, of the haikal screen. All around you see, dusty and confused, wonderful pieces of wood carving.
- ↑ The rite is given in Lord Bute and E. A. Wallis Budge: The Blessing of the Waters (London: H. Frowde, 1901), pp. 102-137.
- ↑ The services for Holy Week and Easter are printed in a special book, called Kitāb albaskah.
- ↑ The beautiful dirt of a Coptic church is one of its most picturesque features. If ever English and American missionaries succeed in their fell purpose of making Copts clean their churches, they will destroy their character, and will make them gaudy and hideous, like the Patriarchal church at Cairo. But I do not think there is much danger.
