Coptic Tombstone Update

News October 25, 2017

(Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities)
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Egypt tombstone update
(Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities)

LUXOR, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that a preliminary translation of the Coptic text on a tombstone recently unearthed at the Avenue of Sphinxes names “Takla,” a ten-year-old girl, who died sometime between the seventh and tenth centuries A.D. The inscription above the cross image engraved on the stone is an abbreviation of the name “Jesus,” according to Mostafa Waziri of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities. Scholars are still working on the incomplete, five lines of text below the cross, where the stone is broken. To read more about the Coptic presence at ancient Egyptian sites, go to “A Pyramid Fit for a Vizier.”

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