Basic History of Coptic Binding

Historic Overview

The book form that we know today, commonly known as the codex, first began in the eastern Mediterranean basin. This new book style became the preferred form of the "new religion", Christianity. In the first four centuries of the Common Era, eighty-three percent of Christian texts were in codex form while eighty-eight percent of Greek texts were scrolls. The Coptic Church was simultaneously the birthplace of the single-quire (or pamphlet) and multi-quire codex.

The Coptic Church was based in Ethiopia and Nubia with enclaves in the Iberian Peninsula. It grew increasingly isolated from the rest of Christendom from the seventh century when Antioch and Alexandria fell into Muslim hands until modern times. With little to no outside contact, the Coptic form of binding was in use continuously until the nineteenth century.