Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic
Dioskoros – the name
The Online database of the DDGLC project is named after the notary and poet Dioskoros of Aphrodito: As an Egyptian who also spoke and wrote Greek; as the inhabitant of an Upper Egyptian village who also undertook journeys to Constantinople; as a Christian and administrator of a monastery who was nevertheless at the same time an aficionado of Greek mythology and poetry; as a notary and author of some of the earliest Coptic legal documents that had previously only been conceivable in Greek – in all these ways Dioskoros, whom his accidentally preserved papyrus archive documents in exceptionally diverse ways, represents the Hellenistic-Christian cultural synthesis and the bilinguality of Late Antique Egypt. As an exemplary agent of the Coptic-Greek language contact, and especially through his lexicographical efforts to compile a Greek-Coptic glossary, Dioskoros is the ideal eponymist for the database of Greek loanwords in Coptic.