The head count of Egyptian Christians has long been contentious, erupting yet again in the struggle over quotas and representation in the drafting of Egypt’s post-2011 constitutions. This question is usually treated in by one-dimensional quantitative assessments, pitting claims of persistent undercounts against assertions that historical census returns are roughly accurate. Moving away from simple body counts, this paper approaches the “Coptic census” with a method based on the interpretation of beliefs and meanings held by socially constituted actors. Employing media archives, policy documents, and other archival sources, mainly in Arabic, I trace the historical trajectory of quantitative claims regarding the size of the Christian population of Egypt alongside the evolving stances of various actors contesting these claims. These diverse actors include the Egyptian statistical authorities, the Coptic Orthodox Church, and lay Coptic activists in Egypt and in the diaspora. The Egyptian Christian relationship to the census is far more historically contingent than dominant narratives allow. What was a relatively narrow quantitative gap between Christian demographic claims and the census in the early 1900s opened into a much wider gap by mid-century. Moreover the dispute became more polyvocal as lay activists, first in Egypt and then abroad, offered ever-higher estimates, challenging the authority of Church and state alike. Christian demographic claims have consequently changed more rapidly than census results. I argue that these changes in the Christian relationship to the Egyptian census are rooted in social transformations and cleavages within the Christian community, and in the changing relationship of Christians to the state. I identify multiple contests over the census, not just between Church and state, but also within the Coptic community itself. At stake are not only the results of the census but also its social and political meaning, and who possesses the authority to produce quantitative figures for the Christian population. I finally analyze the claims of various actors to the authority to produce these data, including appeals to domestic and international law, and to international statistical standards. Against dominant interpretations I argue that, by withholding census results since 1996 and more recently through creative re-interpretation of international statistical guidance, Egyptian officials have in fact endeavored to de-politicize the census, but have been careful not to cede authority over the census itself. The paper closes with an application of the above interpretive framework to the contest over quotas and minority representation in the post-2011 constitutions.