Motto: To write rapidly about Egypt (and the Copts) is impossible. The subject grows with the book, and with the knowledge one acquires by the way. It is, moreover, a subject besat with such obstacles as must impede even the swiftiest pen... Moreover, the writer who seeks to be accurate, has frequently to go for his facts, if not actually to original sources, at all events to translations and commentaries locked up in costly folios, (rare prints), or dispersed far and wide among the pages of scientific journals and the transactions of learned societies. A date, a name, a passing reference, may cost hours of seeking. 1