Coptic Literature
Examples of purely Coptic literature are the works of Abba Antonius and Abba Pachomius, who spoke only Coptic, and the sermons and preachings of Abba Shenouda, who chose to write only in Coptic.
The Pachomian system tended to treat religious literature as mere written instructions.
The earliest original writings in Coptic language were the letters by St. Anthony of Egypt, first of the “Desert Fathers.” During the 3rd and 4th centuries many ecclesiastics and monks wrote in Coptic, among them, St. Pachomius, whose monastic rule (the first cenobitic rule, for solitary monks gathered in communities) survives only in Coptic. St. Athanasius, is the first Patriarch of Alexandria to use Coptic, as well as Greek.
Read more about this topic: Pachomius The Great
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“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)