Ancient Egyptian Language

  The ancient Egyptians called their language (ntjr mdw) "the God's words". During the four millennia of its history, the ancient Egyptian language underwent important graphic, grammatical and lexical changes. These changes reflect the internal evolution of the language but also the impact of the socio-political environment on the language and its writing.

The Egyptian language is related to not only the Sematic tongues (Hebrew, Arabic, Aramatic, Babylonian etc.), but also to the East African language, (Galla, Somali etc.) and the Berber idioms of North Africa. Its connection with the latter groups together known as the Hamitic family, is a thorny subject, but the relationship to the Sematic tongues can be fairly accurately denned. In general structure the similarity is very great; Egyptian shares the principal peculiarity of Sematic in that its word-stems consist of combinations of consonants, as a rule there in number, which are theoretically at last unchangeable.

Grammatical inflection and minor variations of meaning are contrived mainly by ringing the changes on the internal vowels, though affixed endings also are used for the same purpose; more important differences of meaning are created by reduplication,whole or partial, for example; (sn)"brother", (snsn) "be brotherly", or in one or two special cases, by prefixed consonant (m), like (mhnt)"ferry-boat" from (hni) "row"; (n)-formations,(nftnft) "leap away" beside (ftft) "leap". There are moreover, many points of contact in the vocabulary, for exmaple (hsb) "count" in Arabic "hesba"; (ink)"I" in Hebrew (anoki). In spite of these resemblances, Egyptian language differs from all the Sematic tongues, and at least until its relationship to the African language is more closely defined, Egyptian language must certainly be classified as standing outside the Sematic group. The entire vocalic system of old Egyptian many indeed be proved to be have reached a stage resembling that of Hebrew or modern Arabic.

The most striking feature of the Egyptian language in all its stages is its concrete realism, its preoccupation with exterior objects and occurrences to the neglect of those more subjective distinctions which play so prominent part in modern and even in classical languages. Another feature of the Egyptian language is its marked preference for static over dynamic expression; apart from the rare survivals of the active Old Perfective, there's no genuine active tense, all others being derived from passive or neuter participles.

Different stages of the language:

Bearing in mind the fact that written language reflects the spoken language of different periods only to a limited extent, and that monumental records on stone are always more conservative than business documents and letters on potsherds and papyrus, we may roughly distinguish the following linguistic stages:

Old Egyptian; the language of dynasties I-VIII, about 3180 to 2240 BC. This may be taken to include the language of the Pyramid Texts, which however, displays certain peculiarities of its own and is written in a special orthography. Otherwise the surviving documents of this stage are mainly official or otherwise formal-funerary formulae and tomb-inscriptions, including some biographical texts. Old Egyptian passes with but little modification into

Middle Egyptian, possibly the vernacular of dynasties IX-X1, about 2240 to 1990 BC, later contaminated with new popular elements. In the later form it survived from some monumental and literary purposes right down to Greco-Roman times, while the earlier form was retained as the religious language.

Late Egyptian, the vernacular of dynasties XVIII-XXIV, about 1537 to 715 BC, exhibited chiefly in business documents and letters but also in stories and other literary compositions, and to some extent also in the official monuments from dynasty XIX onward. There are but few texts, however, wherein the vernacular shows itself unmixed with the classical idioms of Middle Egyptian. Various foreign words make their appearance.

In various respects the relationship of Late Egyptian to Middle Egyptian is closely parallel to the relationship of French and other Roman languages to their common parent Latin, survived as the monumental and learned language long after it had perished as the language of everyday life.

Hieratic, so called because in the Greco-Roman age it was the usual script employed by the priests, (Greek hieratikos "priestly"), is the name now given to all earlier styles of writing cursive enough for the original pictorial forms of the signs to be no longer clearly recognizable. Under the Old Kingdom, hieratic is invariably used on papyrus, except for religious texts. Religious texts on papyrus begin to be written regularly in hieratic about dynasty XXI, and from that time onward sporadic inscriptions on stone in the same script are found. 

Demotic, this term is loosely applied to the language used in the books and documents written in the script known as Demotic, from dynasty XXV to late Roman times (from 715 BC to 470 AD).Here again the old classical idioms is blended with later vernacular elements, often inextricably.

Demotic (Greek demotikos "popular") is very rapid from hieratic that made its first appearance about the time of the Ethiopian dynasty. Throughout the Ptolemaic and Roman ages it was the ordinary writing of daily life, and is occasionally found even upon stelae of stone.

Coptic, the old Egyptian language in its latest developments, as written in the Coptic script, from about the third century AD onwards. Coptic simply means Egyptian and is written in the Greek alphabet supplemented by seven special character derived from the Hieroglyphs.

The importance of the Coptic philological is due to its being the only form of Egyptian language in which the vowels are regularly written. It must not be forgotten however, that Coptic represents a far later stage of the language than even the most vulgar examples of Late Egyptian. The vocabulary is very different from that of the older periods and includes many Greek than Egyptian. Coptic is semi-artificial literary language and at all events it is extensively influenced by Greek biblical literature.

 No vowels are being written in the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and this neglect of the vowels is seen in Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic, though in certain other Sematic scripts (Babylonian, Ethiopic) the vocalization is always indicated.

Hieroglyphic owes its names to the fact that in the latest times it was employed almost exclusively foe "scared" inscriptions on temple-walls or on the public monuments. At the outset Hieroglyphic was used for all purposes on stelae of stone and the like the signs are incised, or more rarely in relief, without interior markings; in temples and tombs where their decorative effect was of account the Hieroglyphs were often executed with most elaborate detail and beautifully colored; upon papyrus the outlines were on the other hand, abbreviated to a very considerable extent.

As time went on, Hieroglyphic became restricted more and more to monumental purposes, though for religious texts, it was in general employment even on papyrus occasional medium for writing texts on potsherds or papyrus it survives right down to Christian times.