What ⲽ means
In that cipher, ⲽ substitutes for ordinary ⲛ. A substitution cipher uses a key to show which sign replaces each letter; a published Coptic key pairs ⲛ with ⲽ.
Coptic writing adapted Greek letters to write Egyptian and added signs from Demotic, an older Egyptian script, for sounds Greek lacked. The earliest documented examples of ⲽ are from the Late Antique period: monastic graffiti, inscribed pottery fragments called ostraca, prayers, and alphabet exercises.
Historical Coptic cryptography.
Read ⲽ as ⲛ only where the cipher key identifies that substitution.
Who writes ⲽ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ⲽ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find ⲽ
- Search it as
- cipher · Coptic cipher · cryptogram · Coptic cryptography · cryptogrammic ni
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ⲽ\2CBDCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.