The last name, and its meaning, of the Coptic warrior-priest and scholar, Yohanna Chiftichi, has interested many from the time of the French Campaign in Egypt (1798 – 1801). Anouar Louca has written a good article about him in Coptic Encyclopedia, ed. Aziz Suryal Atiya (New York, 1991).
The name Chiftichi is unusual, and hence it has been written in different ways by the French: Chiftichi, Sceptidschy, Scheptichi, and Chfftgy. In Arabic, Louca tells us, it has always been written as al-Shiftishi. But Chiftichi wasn’t the only word which gave difficulty to the French, his first name was also corrupted, and written in different ways: Yuhanna, Jean, Icaha, John, Anna, Anachasis (which is a combination of his first name and his profession, ‘kassis’, that’s ‘priest’).
So much was the confusion caused by his name that it was a bit difficult trying to find more about him. “One hinderance to discovering his identity is due to the illegible spellings of his name by biographers of Champollion, to whom Chiftich taught Coptic pronunciation,” Louca says.
Though Chiftichi was important in many ways, he remained faceless. There is no available drawing or painting of him. Chiftichi died sometime after 1825 (the last date mentioned about him, when he moved from Paris to Marseilles to die there). In Egypt he was a priest, and evidently knew French. Where he learned it is possible to say. He was possibly from one of the Coptic families associated with the French consuls in Cairo. When the French under Bonaparte arrived in Egypt in 1798, he served under the French administration as interpreter for the province of Giza, adjudicator for tax collections, main recorder (registrar) at the Tribunal of Commerce, interpreter for General D’Estaing and then for Citizen Dallonville, director of rights on corporations, and finally interpreter for the Commission created by General Klebér to assemble material for the history of the Conquest of Egypt (by the French). He joined the Coptic men who fought with the French against the Turks and Mamluks, and was made chief of brigade, that’s colonel, in the Coptic Legion which was led by General Yaq’ub the Copt. It is this which earned him the title of soldier-priest; and as Louca says: “He resumed links with the ancient tradition of the warrior-saints so popular in Egypt: Saint George, Saint Menas, and the Thebans, Maurice and Victor”. When Chiftichi moved to France with the withdrawal of the French from Egypt in 1801, he went to Paris. There, he worked as priest for the small Coptic exiles at the Church of Saint Roch, Rue Saint-Roch. It was here that Champollion visited him to learn more in Coptic. In Paris he also helped in the production of the monumental Description de l’Egypte.
We return back to Chiftichi’s name. What does it mean? What is its origin? Louca says in his article in Coptic Encyclopedia that the name is to be translated as “John the Transparent”. This is, of course, wrong. I think Louca confused Chiftichi (الشفتيشي) with the Arabic word ‘شَفَّاف (shaf’faf)’, which means ‘transparent’. The truth of the matter is that the word Chiftichi is Turkish in origin and means, as I have explained in a previous article “What’s the Meaning of Yohanna Chiftichi’s Surnme?”, filigree, lacework, which points to his family’s profession in Cairo as artisans in the profession of metal filigree.
____________________________