Codex and Coptics: Ancient Egypt’s Best DIY That Still Works

How I learned a stitch older than most countries

Before there were “books” as we know them, there was the codex — a stack of pages bound along one edge, portable, durable, and infinitely easier to navigate than a scroll. The first true codices appeared in the Roman Empire around the 1st century CE, but it was the early Christian Egyptians — the Copts — who perfected the art. Between the 2nd and 11th centuries, they stitched multi‑section gatherings with a chain‑link spine that needed no glue, a technique we now call the Coptic stitch. Their covers shifted from layered papyrus to wooden boards wrapped in leather, and their bindings could lie perfectly flat — a feature modern bookbinders still swoon over.

One of the best and oldest examples of this Coptic style bookbinding comes from the Hamouli Manuscripts (823-914 CE).  The Morgan Library & Museum (ML&M) in NYC houses these manuscripts and has produced this publication below which I draw my information from.

biblio2016bpga-vol-35coptic-bindings-at-the-morgan-library--museumsouthworth-and-trujillo-.

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Fragments of the ancient Coptic binding originally on MS M.569

The Hamouli manuscripts — including the Gospel volume with that ornate Coptic binding you’re looking at — were copied on parchment in the Sahidic dialect and bound during the 9th and 10th centuries CE.

That makes them roughly 1,000–1,100 years old, and they’re among the largest surviving group of intact Coptic codices from a single source — the Monastery of St. Michael in the Fayum Oasis, Egypt.

The Coptic script is also the final form of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Coptic Christianity still exists today in Egypt, and Religion for Breakfast has a great video on it:

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The Hardcovers

Which brings us to my workbench. This week I started the process of giving my trimmed signatures their first real home: covers, and the opening stitches that will turn loose paper into a bound, functional, slightly show‑offy book.

The Coptic stitch begins with a small paradox: you start by sewing what will technically be the last signature...but only after it’s attached to a finished hard cover. Which means my first task wasn’t stitching at all - but building the cover my book would call home.

First, I grabbed two book boards cut from an 8x11 and attached wallpaper. Lets call this a practice run because it quickly became apparent this hardcover was way too long for the pages I had printed.

cutting the 8x11

I did a great job with these hardcovers which in no way would fit my pages.

first pair was too large. thankfully 7x5 precut boards would work

Then I grabbed 2 precut boards … each 5×7 inches…and determined these would fit my pages better - though my pages would probably need a haircut. I lined them up with a length of self‑adhesive decorative wallpaper (pretty much sticker paper). I cut the wallpaper so it extended about an inch past the boards on all sides, giving me a comfortable overhang to wrap later.

On the back of the sticker paper, I outlined the exact shape of the boards in pencil… then trimmed the corners at something close to a 45‑degree angle, leaving about a centimeter of space between the cut and the board’s corner. (Too tight and you risk a paper “bald spot” when you fold over; too loose and it looks like your book went to a tailor who didn’t measure. Do tailors even exist anymore?)

I actually tried to measure out a perfect 45 degrees… then realized it’s one of those instinctive angles your eye can do without the need for that type of precision. I sketched the cut lines in pencil first to leave that slight overhang, then used a ruler and craft knife to make the slice. In hindsight… scissors would have done just as good a job

Then I realized I’d lose that penciled outline the second the backing came off…so I folded the wallpaper on itself to leave faint crease lines as my new guides. I peeled the backing halfway, lined the first board along the crease…pressed it down…then slid the rest free and smoothed it across.

Long edges folded in first, then the short… keeping each wrap snug and even. Well…mostly even. Thankfully I have no plans on being an architect.

Backing the Covers

The next step was adding a backing to the hardcover...which does the kindness of hiding my less‑than‑perfect wallpaper folds. I brushed a layer of neutral pH adhesive onto the back of some thinner cardstock I had lying around, then pressed it onto the reverse side of my boards.

The corners didn’t want to behave...so I slid a sheet of parchment paper over everything to protect it from glue, stacked a selection of the heaviest, wholly extraneous books in my house on top, and left it overnight. By morning, the corners and covers were flat & crisp.

Here is where I brought in a lot of unnecessary math. I was trying to mimic the book’s measurements, just scaled down, while bouncing between several different punching stations. Each had its own “unique” system...some in millimeters, some in inches, and one in a unit system that was neither imperial nor metric.

By the time I’d converted everything twice and cross‑checked it once, I decided to just go with my gut, picked one station, marked five holes, and got to work on my first signature. Then I looked at the result and realized every hole was evenly spaced at 1 cm — except for THE VERY FIRST HOLE, which was about 1.2 cm.

I drew a line on the punching cradle where the 1 mark should be - but by that point it was too late

Talk about a "Coptic Bind" ....am I right??....

Lining Up the Covers

The next step was to line up the signature holes with the hard covers...because my holes weren’t exactly symmetrical, this part needed a bit of attention to make sure I had a front cover and back cover with my pretty wallpaper facing outwards...and not the other way around. I nearly messed this up, but using my signature as a guide for the front cover, I punched into my 7×5 inch board, 2 cm from the edge. I feel like it’s a faux‑pas to mix imperial and metric in a guide...but thankfully this isn’t a guide — just an experimental adventure.

I used a T‑ruler to make sure these holes were straight as well...otherwise the covers would sit at an angle to the pages. Then I used the front cover to mark the holes on the back cover, made some critical corrections with the T‑ruler (which is quickly becoming my favourite instrument), and punched those holes perfectly straight.

Punching (and trimming) the Remaining Signatures

The next step was to punch the rest of the signatures — at first using my already‑punched first signature as a guide, but still keeping the punching cradle as my training wheels. By the end I was bold enough to use the cradle on its own...though I may have still double‑checked a few more times than necessary.

Along the way I spotted a couple of signatures that looked a bit too casually cut, so I paused to square them up with the paper cutter. It felt like the right moment to deal with those random angles before they became part of the book’s permanent record.

Once all the pages and covers were lined up, (my holes were PERFECT - brief but satisfying pride spike) I noticed the pages were still overgrowing the covers. I’d already trimmed them once to fit the 5×7 hardcover sizing...but A4 metric paper clearly isn’t interested in cooperating with imperial dimensions, so every single signature went back to the cutter for round two.

Finally, the holes were lined up, the signatures actually fit inside the covers, and everything was set for the next step: stitching. But my first book came with plenty of learning‑curve detours that stretched the timeline… so the sewing will have to wait for the next post.

Stay tuned.