Coptic, or Copts, a name given to such of the Christians of Egypt as are of the sect of Jacobites.

The Copts have a patriarch, who is styled the patriarch of Alexandria, having 11 or 12 bishops under him, but no archbishop. The rest of the clergy, whether secular or regular, are of the order of St Anthony, St Paul, and St Macarius, each of whom have their monasteries. The Copts have seven sacraments, viz., baptism, the eucharist, confirmation, ordination, faith, fasting and prayer.

COPTIC or Coptic Language, is that spoken by the Copts, being the ancient language of the Egyptians, intermixed with the Greek, and the characters of it being those of the Greek.

The ancient Coptic is now a dead language, to be met with nowhere but in books, and those only translations of the scriptures, and of ecclesiastical offices, or others that have a relation thereto; the language now used over all the country being that of the Arabic.