New Egyptian language

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New Egyptian
md t
Z5 		A2 Z3 km t
O49

md.tn km.t
"Language of Egypt"
Period around 16./14. - 7th century BC Chr.

Formerly spoken in

Egypt
Linguistic
classification
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

egy (Egyptian language)

ISO 639-3

egy (Egyptian language)

The Late Egyptian is in the New Kingdom predominant stage of the Egyptian language . Typical New Egyptian forms appear for the first time in the 17th dynasty , purely New Egyptian texts were written before the Amarna period .

The language form came in the 7th century BC. Out of use and was replaced by a younger form of Egyptian, the demotic .

Use and relationship to other stages of development of Egyptian

The theory that has so far often been held that New Egyptian assumed a dominant rank from the Amarna period onwards is based on the analysis of Akhenaten's religious texts . In the Egyptian tradition, older texts from different epochs were always used. The new religious texts of Akhenaten lacked this basis, which is why the new teaching was written in New Egyptian without exception. The conclusion gained from this that New Egyptian prevailed at the same time as Amarna is therefore no longer tenable.

The number of New Egypticisms rose steadily even before the Amarna period. This finding can be clearly seen in the contents of business files and on royal monuments, for example the stele of Kamose . The steady increase in New Egyptian from the 17th dynasty, with the other stations Hatshepsut , Thutmose III. , Amarna and the Ramesside times , document the spread on the basis of new religious concepts.

New Egyptian never completely replaced Middle and Ancient Egyptian as a written language, as older religious texts were repeatedly copied on so-called standard archive templates and passed on into the Ptolemaic period . With the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period , the New Egyptian largely disappeared, as the hieroglyphic and hieratic texts largely reverted to the Middle and Ancient Egyptian archive templates.

The stories and poems of the Ramesside period ( Papyrus D'Orbiney , History of Wenamun , the love songs of the Chester-Beatty I papyrus, etc.) are mainly written in pure New Egyptian language . Some elements that prevailed in New Egyptian (especially the use of p3 / t3 as an article ) can be found for the first time in the colloquial language of the Old Kingdom, which is passed down in speeches on grave walls.

grammar

The most noticeable difference between the orthography of Middle Egyptian and that of New Egyptian is the increasing insignificance of some hieroglyphs, such as the symbols for the weak consonants 3 , w , j and the feminine ending .t , which have now often been left out or written in places where the corresponding sound had never been spoken.

The basic tendency in grammar is the change from the synthetic language structure to the analytical language structure . The grammatical marking of the verbs is increasingly being taken over by functional verbs, the marking of nouns in gender and number by the newly emerging articles. Egyptologists like to compare the differences between Middle Egyptian and New Egyptian with the differences between Latin and Italian .

In the verbal morphology of New Egyptian, the tempo-marked form sḏm.n = f is removed from the system. Instead there is only one sḏm = f , which occurs in two functions: prospective (he will hear) and perfective (he heard) or as a subjunctive. In addition, analytically educated forms, which were already present in Middle Egyptian but were still rare, became more and more popular: cf. New Egyptian jr = f saHa = f "he accused him" (jr "make" as a conjugated functional verb with the following infinitive of the lexical verb) with Middle Egyptian saHa.n = f sw "he accused him". In addition, subordinate clauses are morphologically coded. Due to phonetic developments, many nouns are obviously no longer clearly identifiable in terms of their gender and number differentiation. This led to the expansion of an article system based on original demonstratives. The marking of gender (singular masculine versus feminine; plural has a commune form) and number (singular versus plural) is almost completely moved from the noun to the article. The adjective category is increasingly being separated from the system as an independent element. The functions are increasingly taken over by noun (similar to English stone in: a stone temple).

In terms of syntax, the patterns primarily remain the same. Within sentences with a nominal predicate expression, a preference for two-part juxtaposition patterns can also be observed with non-pronominal NPs (xsbd mAa [lapis lazuli real] Snw = s [hair = her (fem)] "Your hair is real lapis lazuli.) With two-part patterns with Deictic subject element (pAy, tAy, nAy) or, in the case of three-part patterns with copula (pAy, tAy, nAy), the deictic element / copula differentiates gender and number by marking the latter.

Words from neighboring languages ​​are increasingly being included in the vocabulary, but no longer represented with the primary system of graphics, but in a subsystem (unfortunately called the syllabic orthography system), which makes them more noticeable than in earlier epochs.

literature

Grammars

  • J. Cerny, S. Israelit-Groll, C. Eyre, A Late Egyptian Grammar , 4th, updated ed. - Biblical Institute; Rome, 1984 (description of the grammatical system, mainly the texts from Deir el-Medina; strongly formal approach; only to be used as a reference work)
  • Friedrich Junge : Introduction to the grammar of New Egyptian . Harrassowitz Wiesbaden, 1996 (2nd, combined edition 1999) ISBN 3-447-03820-9 (modern, comprehensive introduction that can also serve as a reference work)
  • Adolf Erman: New Egyptian grammar. 2nd edition, Engelmann, Leipzig 1933 (reference grammar that has not yet been replaced, but which is very outdated in terms of verb and syntax)
  • Alexandra von Lieven : Floor plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (among others), Copenhagen 2007, ISBN 978-87-635-0406-5

Dictionaries

  • 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 . (In essence, a greatly expanded extract from Erman / Grapow, contains the words and the Gardiner list as well as the Extended Library , place names with maps and a list of the names of the pharaohs and gods; translations are often uncertain)
    • 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 .
  • Leonard H. Lesko et al. a .: A Dictionary of Late Egyptian , 5 volumes, Berkeley / Providence 1982–1990, ISBN 0-930548-03-5 (hbk), ISBN 0-930548-04-3 . (pbk) (voucher position dictionary that only gives basic meanings)

Grammatical Studies

  • Paul J. Frandsen: An outline of the Late Egyptian Verbal System , Copenhagen 1974

phrasebook

  • Carsten Peust: Hieroglyphic word for word ; Gibberish Volume 115; Reise Know-How Verlag Peter Rump GmbH, ISBN 3-89416-317-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The language codes refer to all ancient Egyptian languages, not just to New Egyptian.
  2. ↑ a b c cf. Alexandra von Lieven: Plan of the course of the stars - the so-called groove book . The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Eastern Studies (inter alia), Copenhagen 2007, pp. 237-238.