Remains of Gnomic Anthologies and Pagan Wisdom Literature in the Coptic Tradition

It is well known that a complete and satisfying “history of Coptic literature” is still a desideratum. Among the other causes contributing to the difficulty of such an enterprise are the fragmentary status of the codices which preserve the texts and the fact that a great part of the surviving literary manuscripts date from the 9th to the 11th cent. This means that we have only relics of the early Coptic literary production, and therefore of the tastes, orientations and cultural formation of those groups which, between the 4th and the 5th century, were creating a new literature in the Coptic language. Despite these difficulties, however, it is clear that the Coptic literary tradition was, from its inception, with very few exceptions, mostly of religious content. The article endeavours to understand through which itinera and with what aims Christian Egypt preserved examples of a pagan wisdom literature and to delineate the environments that were responsible for its circulation.