RSVP · Reconstructing Scribal Vernacular Practices. Coptic Correspondence and Vernacular Scribal Practices in Late Antique and Early Islamic Egypt.

RSVP aims at reassembling the rich world of scribal practices in Coptic letter writing between the 4th and 11th centuries CE. It offers an ambitious reconstruction of epistolographers’ habits, networks, and cultural identities when Coptic was the vernacular Egyptian language employed alongside official idioms (Greek and Arabic).Using a multidisciplinary approach combining paleography, digital humanities, and sociolinguistic analysis, RSVP will analyze for the first time a corpus of over 5000 Coptic letters along four axes: 1) Challenge established views on vernacular practices through expanded Coptic letter analysis. 2) Investigate literacy, paleography, and writing practices in relation to cultural and linguistic shifts. 3) Identify dialectal variation and code switching through linguistic analysis, illuminating the period’s complex linguistic landscape. 4) Assess published Coptic letters’ impact on social cohesion and power dynamics on a diachronic and countrywide scale.RSVP will contribute to papyrology, Coptology, and digital humanities, by reassessing writing culture, multilingualism, and epistolary étiquette, while applying digital approaches for large-scale analysis of ancient documents and open-linked data (e.g. OCR for semi-automatic text encoding and digital paleography for handwriting identification). Social historians of Antiquity and early medieval times will also have access to a nuanced understanding of cultural continuity and change during a crucial period of political and cultural transition between Byzantium and Islam, enhancing understanding of provincial life, local elites, villagers, and women’s roles.By reconstructing letter-writing practices in Coptic, RSVP will refocus scholarship on overlooked historical sources, shedding new light on epistolographers’ daily matters, cultural identities, and social networks, while providing a view from below. It will amplify long-silenced and forgotten voices.