Old Coptic Dja

It marks a consonant sound; the word around it carries the meaning. The Mimaut Papyrus, an Egyptian ritual text dated 201–400 CE, preserves it.

Old Coptic scripts developed among Egyptian temple priests by the 1st century CE at latest. Scribes extended Greek letters with Demotic signs—an older Egyptian script—to write Egyptian sounds Greek lacked. Their varied forms appear in short word explanations, rituals, astrology, and labels on mummies.

Ⳙ seems to derive from a Demotic group of signs linked to two hieroglyphs—Egyptian picture signs for a fire-making drill and a vulture.