are thought by scholars to be Egyptian in origin. An example of this is Zaphnath-Paaneah, the Egyptian name given to Joseph. Demotic and Coptic Demotic is the name given to the Egyptian script used to write both the Egyptian vernacular of the Late Period from the eight century BC as well as texts in archaic forms of the language. It was written in a script derived from a northern variety of hieratic writing. The last evidence of archaic Egyptian in Demotic is a graffito written in 452 BC, but Demotic was used to write vernacular before and in parallel with the Coptic script throughout the early Ptolemaic Kingdom until it was supplanted by the Coptic alphabet entirely. Coptic is the name given to the late Egyptian vernacular when it was written in a Greek-based alphabet, the Coptic alphabet; it flourished from the time of Early Christianity (c. 31/33–324) but first appeared during the Hellenistic period . It survived into the medieval period. By the 16th century Coptic was dwindling rapidly due to the persecution of Coptic Christians under the Mamluks. It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Coptic Catholic Church. Dialects Most hieroglyphic Egyptian texts are written in a literary prestige register rather than the vernacular speech variety of their author. As a result, dialectical differences are not apparent in written Egyptian until the adoption of the Coptic alphabet. Nevertheless, it is clear that these differences existed before the Coptic period. In one Late Egyptian letter (dated c. 1200 BC), a scribe jokes that his colleague's writing is incoherent like "the speech of a Delta man with a man of Elephantine.” Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian that, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from northern and southern dialects of Egyptian. Written Coptic has five major dialects, which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably the southern Saidic dialect, the main classical dialect, and the northern Bohairic dialect, currently used in Coptic Church services. Writing systems Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are written on stone in hieroglyphs. The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is ("writing of the gods' words"). In antiquity, most texts were written on perishable papyrus in hieratic