ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses a dating formula that occurs in Coptic inscriptions, book colophons and legal documents from the early eighth till the thirteenth century. The formula dates the texts in question not to a worldly sovereign, but to the extra-temporal reign of Jesus Christ. It is argued here that the formula arose as a reaction against Muslim rule and continued Byzantine ways of acclaiming Christ’s kingship under dramatically altered political circumstances.

First published in: Y.N. Youssef, and S. Moawad (eds.), From Old Cairo to the New World: Coptic studies presented to Gawdat Gabra on the occasion of this sixty-fifth birthday (Colloquia Antiqua 9), Leuven/Paris/Walpole, MA: Peeters 2013, 173–84.