Journal of Coptic Studies 16 (2014) 115–124 doi: 10.2143/JCS.16.0.3066723 THE USE OF THE TITLE APA FOR THE SENDER IN AN OPENING EPISTOLARY FORMULA B Y MAHER A. E ISSA Introduction 1 Like many non-literary texts, Coptic letters 2 are valuable not only for what they reveal of the life and affairs of the ancient Egyptians over a long period of time, but also for what they can teach us of the non-literary Coptic idiom. 3 Indeed, Coptic documentary texts give us a different and more complete picture of Christianity as it was lived in time and space, than the one presented by other sources. 4 In general, letters make up one of the largest categories in the body of surviving texts on papyrus and related materials. 5 Because letters are the most numerous genre of Coptic writing, most are readily classifiable. However, as Malcolm Choat mentioned, “As more Coptic documents are published, further work on Coptic epistolog- raphy becomes both possible and increasingly necessary. The treatment of Biedenkopf-Ziehner lays the groundwork, but further diachronic analysis is desirable.” 6 In other words, although the work of Biedenkopf-Ziehner is a comprehensive study on the Coptic letter formulae, a classification and study of Coptic letters in terms of contents and pragmatics is still needed. 7 1 This article was written during my post-doctoral research at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes of the CNRS in Paris (2013), funded by the Institut français d’Égypte au Caire. I would like to give my special thanks to Dr. Anne Boud’hors for hosting me, and for her continuous support and valuable remarks. I extend my thanks to Prof. Dr. Stephen Quirke, professor of Egyptology at UCL (England) and to Inge Warga (my wife) for correcting my English. 2 Coptic letters are among the earliest extant documents written in Coptic, starting from the 4 th century, and still occur among the latest ones from the 11 th century; the great bulk of the Coptic letters fall in a roughly two hundred year period of time from the later 6 th to the 8 th centuries. 3 Worrell, Coptic Texts 171. 4 MacCoull, “Coptic Documentary Papyri” 42. 5 Bagnall & Cribiore, Women’s Letter 5; MacCoull, “Coptic Papyri in Duke Univer- sity” 225. 6 Choat, “Epistolary Formulae” 667, referring to Biedenkopf-Ziehner, Untersuchungen zum koptischen Briefformular. 7 See Richter, “Coptic Letters” 744.