Copts refer to the Christians of Egypt, who were in the majority after the Arab conquest, and now make up only a small part of the population of this country. Their history, language, and culture represent a multi-faceted field of study. Coptic is the last stage of ancient Egyptian, the Coptic alphabet is based on Greek with the addition of several letters from the ancient Egyptian demotic script to convey consonant sounds that were absent in Greek. One of the reasons for the transition to a new script is considered to be the need for Christian Egyptians to make the translation of the Holy Scriptures accessible to all residents of Egypt, which, in turn, contributed to the spread of Christianity in this country. On the one hand, over time, under the influence of new relationships with other Christian traditions, the pagan past became obsolete. On the other hand, the culture of Ancient Egypt was ingrained in all spheres of life, and it was impossible to part with it once and for all. This article examines some of the motifs and plots of Coptic hagiographic and apocryphal literature. In particular, for subjects depicting the afterlife, for the motif of the integrity of the martyr's body, the motif of swaddling clothes, etc. the author finds possible origins in ancient Egyptian literature. Keywords: Coptic literature, hagiography, apocrypha, testimonies of the dead, veils, flood of the Nile, the myth of Osiris. Among scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a prevailing tendency to derive Christian postulates and stories from pagan ones, including ancient Egyptian ones (Graves, 1875). Later, on the contrary, Judeo-Christian and Iranian influences began to be found in late Egyptian motifs (Zandee, 1960). However, the question of the influence of Egypt on Christianity was still of concern to researchers (Hallock, 1934, p. 6-17) .1 In the second half of the 20th century, studies devoted to the Egyptian mentality, its reflection in Coptic literature, and its ... Read more