A Letter of His Holiness Pope Kyrillos the Sixth

On the Occasion of the Feast of Nayrouz

To their eminences, our beloved brothers the metropolitans, the bishops, and our sons the blessed clergy and the congregation of the See of St. Mark.

Grace, peace, and blessing from God our Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit the Comforter, to all of us and all our children — men, women, young men, and young women.

On September 11 of this year, our new Coptic year begins, 1686 of the pure martyrs, which is the first day of the month of Tute, [so called] in reference to the first astronomer who established the ancient Egyptian calendar which was used only by the Copts for a long period of time before any other calendar was known to the world after it in both East and West. Out of their appreciation for this scholar, the ancient Egyptians elevated him to the ranks of the gods. {1} So Thoth, or Tute, became the god of the pen, and the god of wisdom and knowledge, and his name was immortalized as the first month of the Egyptian, or Coptic, year.

The origin of the Egyptian Coptic calendar was in 4241 B.C., that is, in the forty-third century B.C., when the ancient Egyptians observed the star Sirius, calculated the period between two of its appearances, and divided it into three major seasons (flooding, sowing, and harvesting), then into twelve months, each having thirty days. They added the remaining period, which was five days and a quarter, and made it a month which they called the Small Month. The Coptic year thus became 365 days in the common year and 366 days in the leap year.

The Egyptian farmer observed this calendar because it corresponded to the agricultural seasons, and continues to observe it to this day. Towards the end of the third century A.D., the persecution of the Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian began, and the emperor devised a meticulous plan to eradicate Christianity that was based on four points:

(1) Killing the bishops and priests; (2) Destroying the churches; (3) Burning the holy books; (4) Expelling the Christians from governmental positions and permitting the shedding of their blood.

The Copts in Egypt suffered the greatest severity of this persecution because Diocletian believed that the head of the serpent dwelt in Egypt. Therefore, he came personally and swore by his pagan gods that he would not cease from slaughtering the Christians by his own hand until the blood spilled by the Christians reached the knee of the horse. The emperor thus began to kill the Christians with his sword while riding on his horse, and it happened at sunset that the horse stumbled and fell to the ground, and the blood shed on the ground reached the knees of the horse. 

The emperor had grown weary and fatigued from slaughtering the Christians, and the sword had left marks and wounds in his hand, so he considered himself to have fulfilled his vow to the gods, and so he ceased his slaughter of the Christians. The number of Christians killed was estimated to have reached approximately 840,000 martyrs.

As a result of the severity that the Christians in Egypt endured during the reign of this emperor, they decided to begin a new chapter in their history, dating it from the year 284 A.D., which was the year in which emperor Diocletian ascended the throne of the empire. On August 29 of that year, the first of Tute began for the first Coptic year. For this reason, the Coptic calendar is 284 years shorter than [the Gregorian calendar]. From this date onwards, the Coptic calendar became known as the calendar of the pure martyrs.

Martyrdom for the sake of the Faith was and remains the glory of our people and a crown of pride for our Church such that she became known {2} in all the centuries as the Church of the Martyrs, and her history as the history of the martyrs. It was said by some historians that the number of the martyrs who were martyred in Egypt exceeded the number of Christian martyrs in the whole world, and the famous proverb was invented which says that it is easier to relocate a mountain from its place than to covert a Copt from his beliefs. It was also said that every inch of Egyptian soil has been watered by the blood of the martyrs.

The Copts of Egypt are the descendants of the martyrs who willingly accepted death over renouncing their faith and Church, and who did not accept to waver from their faith, whether to the right or to the left. And our Church remained, in her doctrine, rites, and tradition — as some foreign historians have said — a unique image of ancient Christianity and as an ancient artifact testifying to the Apostolic Faith in its most ancient form.

It is therefore our responsibility to preserve the glorious heritage, the deposit of the Faith by the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us, as Saint Paul the Apostle says, to hold fast to our faith, doctrine, heritage, and traditions, to not waver from our ancient beliefs, and to remain steadfast in them until the last breath. So our Savior said: “[H]old fast what you have until I come” (Rev 2:[25]). And those — from among our congregation and children — who have left their country for a distant country should not forget their first love for God, their Church, and their homeland, and should fortify themselves against every foreign spirit, the spirit of sin and evil, and should behave in a manner befitting of Christ with all godliness and reverence, and should pray for the peace of their Church and their country for their victory over all enemies hidden and manifest, and for the sake of the spread of the kingdom of Christ. Remember that we are suffering a great difficulty in Israel’s seizure of the Holy Lands and its anticipated plan of demolishing the temples and places of worship in order to build its Temple on their ruins — a situation which will definitely lead to an intense war. Pray that the Lord may avert the calamity and prepare deliverance and victory for the homeland, through the intercession of the pure Virgin Lady, Mary, who has been appearing on the domes of her church in Zeitun since April 2, 1968 and to this day, grieving over what is happening now in the Holy Lands, and appearing to be kneeling in prayer to impede, by her prayers, the evil sought by the enemies of peace; and through the prayers of Saint Mark the Apostle, whose relics’ return from Rome we celebrated on June 24, 1968 — a blessing for our country and our congregation.

May the God of heaven protect you and build you up in spirit, soul, and body; and to His Majesty is due thanksgiving forever. Amen.

This letter was first published by the Higher Committee for Sunday School, Sunday School Magazine: September 1969, pages 1-3.