The book I started with and the book I’m re-starting with is:

• Layton, Bentley. 2006. Coptic in 20 Lessons: Introduction to Sahidic Coptic with Exercises & Vocabularies. Leuven: Peeters. ISBN: 978-90-429-1810-8

Along the way I picked up these texts as well. I’ve read a fair amount of Shenoute’s canons so far; cenobitic monasticism is not my cup of tea.

• Lambdin, Thomas O. (1983) 2000. Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. ISBN: 0-86554-048-9
• Brankaer, Johanna. 2010. Coptic: A Learning Grammar (Sahidic). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-05894-0
• Layton, Bentley. 2014. The Canons of our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute. Oxford: OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-878519-4
• Smith, Richard. (1983) 1999. A Concise Coptic-English Lexicon. 2nd ed. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN 978-0-8841-03903

And at a Viennese bookstore, I purchased this classic:

• Spiegelberg, Wilhelm. 1921. Koptisches Handwörterbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung.

According to a stamp on the first page, this book was previously owned by Prof. H. Junker in Vienna; after quick internet sleuthing, I think it once must have been the property of Professor Hermann Junker, the troublesome intrigue (to say the least) about whom warrants further inspection. The cover is some gold-colored material with blood-red ink on the outer rim of the pages. It’s wrapped in some kind of protective plastic book cover as well.

On the same antique bookstore hunting expedition, I purchased a copy of a text on an earlier stage of Egyptian because who doesn’t need a copy of something like that? The hieroglyphs are mesmerizing.

• Ockinga, Boyo G. 2012. A Concise Grammar of Middle Egyptian: An Outline of Middle Egyptian Grammar by Hellmut Brunner revised and expanded. Darmstadt: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. ISBN 978-3-8053-4532-3

I’m not quite sure how Brunner’s text connects to Ockinga’s, but I’m sure that’ll become clearer. I don’t know if the second part of the subtitle is meant to be one or not.