"Write the book's language on turquoise monuments": considering a Coptic dictionary of the Nag Hammadi texts

This talk will explore some advantages and practical considerations of a Coptic dictionary dedicated specifically to the Nag Hammadi (NH) corpus. Crum's dictionary, as impressive and dialect-spanning as it is, was completed in 1939, before the NH texts were known. There is a sufficient number of scholars and students specifically interested in the NH texts, to the exclusion of other typical textual foci like Bible (Sahidic [S] and/or Bohairic [B]), Shenoute (S), or liturgy (B), to warrant an NH-specific lexicon. Looking at the NH texts together lexically cuts across dialect lines (as does Crum's dictionary) and may offer an opportunity to re-analyze and re-frame our picture of Coptic dialects, both at NH and beyond. The NH corpus is written in its own kind of Sahidic and Lycopolitan. For the Lycopolitan side, there is recent lexicographical and other textual work in Manichaean Coptic texts, including the longer known texts from Madīnat Māḍī as well as more recently studied ones from Kellis, all written in Lycopolitan, but a kind different from the NH variety. A short lexical database for a few texts (\emph{The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles} in full, some others in excerpts) serves as a trial for some of the ideas discussed here.