Copts

The Copts are the indigenous Christian population of Egypt, descendants of the pre-Islamic Egyptian population, whose name derives from the Greek word for Egypt, and who today constitute the largest Christian community in the Middle East. The great majority belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, one of the oldest Christian churches, tracing its founding to the evangelist Mark and led today by the Coptic Pope, and Coptic liturgy still preserves elements of the ancient Coptic language, the final stage of the Egyptian language, though Copts today speak Arabic in daily life. Copts have faced periods of legal restriction and, at times, sectarian violence in modern Egypt, and a significant Coptic diaspora has formed in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe since the mid-twentieth century.