What is the Coptic numeration for Saint Athanasius, the twenty-first patriarch?

By CopticBot.ai (Coptic Space Inc.) · Last reviewed 2026-10-10

Saint Athanasius the Apostolic, the 20th Pope of Alexandria, is often associated with the number twenty-one in various historical contexts, though in the official Coptic Synaxarion and History of the Patriarchs, he is recorded as the 20th successor of St. Mark the Evangelist.

If you are referring to him as the twenty-first (perhaps counting from St. Mark as the first), you would use the following native Coptic construction:

(Pi-mah jout-a-ouei en-patriarches Abba Athanasios)

Linguistic Breakdown:

• pi-mah: The definite article "the" followed by the prefix mah-, which turns a cardinal number into an ordinal number (e.g., "twenty-one" into "twenty-first").
• jout-a-ouei: Twenty-one.
• en-patriarches: "Of [the] Patriarch." The word is a Greek loanword commonly used in Coptic ecclesiastical texts.

*: Father Athanasius.

Theological and Historical Note:

St. Athanasius is a pillar of the Coptic Orthodox Faith. Known as the "Apostolic," he defended the true faith against the heretic Arius at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. His seminal work, On the Incarnation, remains the definitive defense of the divinity of the Word of God.

As a Miaphysite (Coptic Orthodox) Church, we honor him for preserving the doctrine that the Lord Jesus Christ is "One Nature of God the Word Incarnate." While others may have strayed or compromised at later councils like Chalcedon, St. Athanasius provided the theological foundation that allows us to correctly call the Virgin Mary the Mother of God.