Ancient Egyptian language

Ancient Egyptian ; (own name has not survived)
Period	around 2707-2216 BC Chr. And later
Formerly spoken in	Old Egypt
Linguistic ; classification	Afro-Asian Egyptian Ancient Egyptian ;
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	egy (Egyptian language)
ISO 639-3	egy (Egyptian language)

The ancient Egyptian language is the stage of development of Egyptian in the narrower sense, which is passed down in the inscriptions of the Old Kingdom (2707–2216 BC) and individual later texts such as the coffin texts and inscriptions of the late period . Apart from the only fragmentary preserved early Egyptian , the language of the Thinite period , which is also referred to as "Archaic Ancient Egyptian" together with the language of the pyramid texts , it is the oldest surviving level of Egyptian and the oldest surviving Afro-Asian language at all.

grammar

The grammar of Ancient Egyptian differs only slightly from the later Middle Egyptian , from which it was superseded in the First Intermediate Period . Important differences are the dual forms of the verbs and pronouns that were lost in Middle Egyptian, a separate series of absolute personal pronouns that appear very rarely in Middle Egyptian and is replaced by a new one, the emergence of constructions with auxiliary verbs such as ˁḥˁ , a uniform negation n , which is partially replaced by nn in Middle Egyptian , sound changes, the exact date of which can only be partially determined, as well as - in the area of writing - the standardization of the " orthography " in Middle Egyptian.

It must be emphasized, however, that many of these developments were already evident in the Old Kingdom, so that the ancient Egyptian itself also shows differences. The greatest differences exist between the very archaically written pyramid texts , which do not come from the fifth and sixth dynasties, but apparently reflect a very early stage of ancient Egyptian, and the more modern secular texts such as biographies and individual letters. Important differences are the flexion of the copula in the nominal sentence and the complete lack of pseudo- verbal constructions with prepositions ( jnk ḥr sḏm “I hear”, literally “I am listening”) in the pyramid texts. In phonetic terms of sound change of would h after š (so after that of Otto Rössler founded, but not generally accepted reconstruction) and from k to t mention that appear not yet completed in the Pyramid Texts.

Corpus

In addition to the already mentioned pyramid texts and the numerous biographies on grave walls (from 4th dynasty ), the text corpus of ancient Egyptian contains some letters (from 5th dynasty ), legal texts, an archive from Elephantine ( 6th dynasty ), calls and speeches on representations of the daily life, grave inscriptions with requests for the preservation of the grave and since the early dynastic period countless lists of offerings and similar In addition, there are some king inscriptions from the late period , which are written in the language of the Old Kingdom .

A recently added, extremely important source is over 2000 letters and documents, which date to the 6th Dynasty and were written on clay tablets . They were found in the oasis town of Ayn Asil , in Dachla , where papyrus was apparently rare and expensive.

Scientific research

Research into ancient Egypt began relatively late at the end of the 19th century with the publication of the pyramid texts by Gaston Maspero (1882–1894) and Kurt Sethe (1908–1910; side volumes 1922) and the secular inscriptions of the Old Kingdom, also by Kurt Sethe (Documents of the Old Kingdom, 1908). Kurt Sethe in particular developed the language of the pyramid texts, u. a. in his work on the Egyptian verb. Subsequently, the ancient Egyptian was researched together with the Middle Egyptian, Elmar Edel presented his own grammar 1955–1964 with his monumental ancient Egyptian grammar (see bibliography below). In the discussion on Egyptian verbal syntax ( standard theory ) triggered by Hans J. Polotsky's Études de syntaxe copte (1944) and other works , a renewed engagement with the ancient Egyptian verb became inevitable, see the studies by Doret (1986) on profane inscriptions and Allen (1984) on the pyramid texts. But to this day the existing forms of ancient Egyptian have not been conclusively clarified, so in 1984 James P. Allen was able to prove the existence of a synthetic futuric form that was previously thought to be a present tense; it was not until 2005 that Wolfgang Schenkel demonstrated that the Egyptian tense sḏm.n = f two syntactically contains separate tenses, and it cannot be ruled out that new fundamental insights into the Egyptian verbal system will still be gained in the future.

font

The ancient Egyptian language had two scripts of its own, the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the hieratic script , which were created independently of each other.

The hieroglyphic and hieratic script influenced each other in their development; the connection was recognizable at all times.

Text example

literature

General

Simon D. Schweitzer: Script and Language of the 4th Dynasty. (= MENES, Studies on the Culture and Language of the Early Egyptian Period and the Old Kingdom. Vol. 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-447-05137-X .

Grammars and Introductions

Elmar Edel: Ancient Egyptian grammar (= Analecta Orientalia. Vol. 34/39). Rome 1955/1964 (monumental reference grammar of ancient Egyptian, however, especially in the area of verbal inflection and verbal syntax, partly overtaken by the more recent books listed below.)
AH Gardiner : Egyptian Grammar. 3rd edition, Oxford 1957. (Basic reference grammar of Middle Egyptian with the Gardiner list in the appendix; only deals with ancient Egyptian in a subordinate manner)
Wolfgang Schenkel: Tübingen introduction to the classical Egyptian language and writing . Pagina, Tübingen 2005 ISBN 3-938529-00-8 (Lecture notes for beginners' teaching of Middle and (rather subordinate) Ancient Egyptian; covers the latest research)

Grammar Studies

James P. Allen: The inflection of the Verb in the Pyramid Texts (= Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca . Vol. 2). 2 volumes, Undena Publications, Malibu 1984, ISBN 0-89003-143-6 (softbound); ISBN 0-89003-142-8 (hardbound) (important study of the ancient Egyptian verb of the pyramid texts) .
Éric Doret: The narrative verbal system of Old and Middle Egyptian (= Cahiers d'Orientalisme. No. XII). Cramer, Geneva 1986 (only deals with the profane inscriptions; slightly outdated)
Jürgen Osing: The nominal formation of Egyptian. 2 volumes, von Zabern, Mainz 1976.

Dictionaries

Adolf Erman , Hermann Grapow : Dictionary of the Egyptian language. Volume IV; Volume VI: German-Egyptian dictionary. ; Volume VII: Declining Dictionary. ; Volume VIII-X: Directory of evidence. Berlin 1950–1963. (still the basic dictionary)

Hannig-Lexika: The language of the pharaohs. (2800-950 BC)
- Volume 1 - Rainer Hannig : The language of the pharaohs. Large concise dictionary of Egyptian-German (= cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 64). von Zabern, Mainz 1995, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 .
- Volume 2 - Rainer Hannig, Petra Vomberg: Vocabulary of the Pharaohs in subject groups. Culture handbook of Egypt (= cultural history of the ancient world. Vol. 72). von Zabern, Mainz 1998, ISBN 3-8053-2543-6 .
- Volume 3 - Rainer Hannig: The language of the pharaohs. Large concise German-Egyptian dictionary (= cultural history of the ancient world. Vol. 86). von Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2609-2 .
- Volume 4 - Rainer Hannig: Egyptian dictionary 1. Old Empire and the first interim period (= cultural history of the ancient world. Vol. 98). von Zabern, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-8053-3088-X . (Special dictionary of ancient Egyptian with references)

Text output

Wolfgang Kosack : The ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. In a new German translation; completely edited and edited by Wolfgang Kosack. Christoph Brunner, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-9524018-1-1 .
Kurt Sethe : The ancient Egyptian pyramid texts
Georg Steindorff (Ed.): Documents of Egyptian antiquity. Leipzig 1904 ff.

Web links

Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (text database and dictionary)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b The ISO and SIL codes refer to all ancient Egyptian languages, not just to ancient Egyptian.
^ "A Description of the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Language Family"
^ "The Egyptian Language"
↑ Elmar Edel: Ancient Egyptian grammar. Sections 511-538.
↑ Published: Kurt Sethe: Documents of the Old Kingdom. Leipzig 1933, pp. 128-131

[ISO_639-1] The ISO and SIL codes refer to all ancient Egyptian languages, not just to ancient Egyptian.

[2] "A Description of the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) Language Family"

[3] "The Egyptian Language"

[4] Elmar Edel: Ancient Egyptian grammar. Sections 511-538.

[5] Published: Kurt Sethe: Documents of the Old Kingdom. Leipzig 1933, pp. 128-131