The tradition of the Church of Egypt traces its origin to the
Evangelist St. Mark, the first Bishop of Alexandria, and
ascribes to him the parent liturgy from which all the others
used by Melchites, Copts, and by the daughter-Church of
Abyssinia are derived. These three bodies possess the three
groups of liturgies used throughout the original Patriarchate of
Alexandria. There is the Greek Liturgy of St. Mark, the oldest
form of the three, used for some centuries after the Monophysite
schism by the orthodox Melchites; there are then three
liturgies, still used by the Copts, translated into Coptic from
the Greek and derived from the Greek St. Mark, and, further, a
number of Abyssinian (Ethiopic) uses, of which the foundation is
the "Liturgy of the Twelve Apostles", that also descends from
the original Greek Alexandrine rite By comparing these liturgies
and noticing what is common to them, it is possible in some
measure to reconstruct the old use of the Church of Alexandria
as it existed before the Monophysite s