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EGYPTIAN

(LANGUAGE)

A branch of the Afro-asiatic language group (also called Hamito-Semitic). As with other Afro-asiatic languages (Semitic, Berber, Chushitic, Chadic, Omotic), Egyptian exhibits particular linguistic features, including bi- and tri-consonantal root structures that are inflected in various ways, an original vocalic system of /i/, /a/, /u/, final feminine *at, a qualitative or stative verb form (Old Perfective), independent and suffix pronouns, and an adjectival suffix -I (“nisbation”).

History and Development

The history of Egyptian, extending roughly over four millennia of usage (ca. 3200 b.c.e.–1300 c.e.), is generally divided into two historical, and in some cases overlapping, phases: (1) Older Egyptian (ca. 3200-1300), encompassing Archaic Egyptian, Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, and Late Middle Egyptian; and (2) Later Egyptian (ca. 1300 b.c.e.–1300 c.e.), consisting of Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. The earliest examples of noncontinuous writing (late 4th millennium) consist of hieroglyphs on bone and ivory tags, clay seal impressions, pottery, and stone vases, recording the exchange of commodities. Egyptian most likely came into existence under the newly formed Egyptian state (ca. 3100), for which it served both as an administrative tool (cursive script) and a means for the public display of royal and religious ideology in the form of monumental hieroglyphic writing. The 2nd through 4th Dynasties (ca. 2840-2500) saw significant developments in writing and public display, moving from offering and title lists (in private tombs) to continuous texts in religious (Djoser at Heliopolis) and later administrative contexts. Throughout Egyptian history, writing and literacy were restricted to a very small segment of Egyptian society, probably no larger than 1 or 2 percent of the total population, and preserved texts reflect the worldview of this literary elite.

The language of the earlier dynasties (3rd to 8th), roughly contemporary with the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2160), is called Old Egyptian and is most widely represented in the Pyramid Texts (royal funerary spells/rituals, 5th-8th Dynasties) and private tomb biographies. The next written phase of the language, Middle or Classical Egyptian, extends roughly from the end of the Old Kingdom to the mid-18th Dynasty (ca. 2160-1400). It was during this period, especially the 12th Dynasty (1963-1786), that many of the great literary compositions of Egyptian literature were written, encompassing a variety of fully developed literary genres, including tales (e.g., Sinuhe, Shipwrecked Sailor), hymns (e.g., Hymn to the Inundation), and teachings (e.g., Merikare).

Parallel to the formal written Egyptian of the 12th-Dynasty elite, a more colloquial form of the language, Late Middle Egyptian, appears initially in practical contexts, such as letters and accounts. By the New Kingdom (1540-1069), Late Middle Egyptian is found in religious and royal monumental texts (e.g., Book of the Heavenly Cow, Pap. Leiden I 350, Nauri Decree) and continues to be used throughout the pharaonic period and beyond (e.g., Shabako Stone, Pi[ankhi] Stela, and in Greco-Roman temple inscriptions). In addition, literary classics of the Middle Kingdom, for which we possess mostly New Kingdom copies/fragments, were transmitted in Late Middle Egyptian; this literary corpus served as the classical literary core for the early New Kingdom high cultural elite.

Late Egyptian, as a written language, emerges in the second half of the New Kingdom during the Amarna period (ca. 1350-1336). In literary Late Egyptian (e.g., Wenamun, Horus and Seth), which exhibits a number of features in common with standard classical Egyptian (e.g., narrative tenses, some negative particles), one encounters literary forms not found in Middle Kingdom literature (narrative fiction, love poetry, and school texts). Nonliterary Late Egyptian refers to the language of everyday affairs contained in administrative documents, letters, and accounts of the Ramesside period (1292-1075). In the Saite period and beyond (644 b.c.e.–ca. 450 c.e.), Demotic cursive, denoting both the cursive script and the vernacular written in it, served as the language of administrative, legal, and economic concerns, with some literary texts as well (e.g., the tales of Setne Khamwas). The last phase of Egyptian is Coptic (ca. 3rd to 14th century c.e.), the language of the Christian or Coptic Church in Egypt. The Coptic script consists of letters from the Greek alphabet with an additional handful of signs taken from Demotic to represent Egyptian phonemes not found in Greek. Of its various dialects, that known as Bohairic became the official and liturgical language of the Coptic Church. In addition to early magical texts and translations of biblical books, Coptic manuscripts preserve important noncanonical writings as well, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of James.

Scripts

Egyptian is written in four major scripts: hieroglyphic, hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic. The latter two have already been discussed. The elaborate and decorative hieroglyphic system of writing (from Gk. “sacred carved [letters]”) is the most long-lived — and widely recognized today — of the scripts, originating in the Pre-dynastic period and extending in usage down to the late 4th century c.e. As the monumental script (e.g., carved or painted in temple reliefs, tombs, stelae, statuary, etc.), hieroglyphic served the ideological needs via public display of the Egyptian state. For business and administrative needs, a cursive adaptation was devised, known as hieratic (1st dynasty down to 3rd century c.e.), written with reed pen on papyrus and ostraca. Scribes normally worked in hieratic and a more simplified hieroglyphic form; although they were literate, evidence suggests that their knowledge of decorative monumental hieroglyphic was limited.

The number of hieroglyphic signs employed in Egyptian varies through time, ranging from ca. 750 in Classical Egyptian up to ca. 6,000 in the Greco-Roman period. These signs are pictographic, depicting both objects (e.g., buildings, furniture, agricultural implements) and living things (e.g., people, animals, trees, plants). Unlike other languages of the ancient Near East, Egyptian throughout its long history retained its pictorial character as both writing and representational art. This fusion of script and representation means, for example, that the grouping, orientation, and placement of signs are determined by aesthetic or artistic considerations beyond the mere writing of a script.

Basic Principles of Writing

Egyptian pictographic signs are of two basic types: phonograms and semograms. Phonograms may represent up to three consecutive consonantal sounds; thus a given sign may be mono- (picture of a human foot = phonetic /b/), bi- (picture of a house = phonetic /p-r/), or tri-consonantal (Egyptian dung-beetle = phonetic /h-p-r/). Egyptian has 24 mono-consonantal signs, often referred to as its “alphabet,” but only rarely do these function independently of semantic indicators. In addition to phonological indicators, signs could serve as semograms, either by depicting the object itself (logogram) or indicating its semantic or lexical field (generic determinative or taxogram). For example, the Egyptian word “sun” (r{w) is represented by a picture of the sun itself, and the word “face” (Egyp. ḥr) shown as a human face. Using the rebus principle (e.g., picture of a bee + leaf = “belief”), such logograms could be used in writing various words, or portions thereof, that are unrelated in meaning, but with partially identical phonology (e.g., the “face” logogram indicates phonetic /ḥ-r/ in Egyp. ḥrt, “tomb, necropolis”).

Generic determinatives are placed after words to indicate their semantic field (e.g., a seated man with hand to mouth often denotes actions or states such as eating, drinking, hunger, speaking, or silence). Parts of the body (e.g., ear, eye, nose, arm) may also serve as determinatives (e.g., the eye as determinative with words relating to seeing, looking, blindness, wakefulness, or weeping).

Words that are phonetically identical are distinguished in meaning by their determinatives. For example, depending on its determinative, Egyp. ms could be read as “child” (with a child as determinative), “calf” (with calf determinative), “bouquet” (with herb determinative), or the enclitic particle (followed by human figure with hand to mouth).

There is as well much overlap between the above types or categories, so that a given sign could function as phonogram, logogram, or semogram. For example, the rectangular house sign could be read as (1) the phonetic combination /p-r/; (2) the word “house” (with a vertical stroke to show its non-phonetic usage); or (3) a determinative with words relating to buildings or structures (e.g., “room,” “sanctuary,” “interior,” etc.).

Loanwords in the OT

A number of Hebrew words and phrases in the OT may be explained as derivative, either directly or indirectly, from Egyptian. For example, Heb. yĕʾôr, “Nile River” (Gen. 41:1-3) from Egyp. i (t) rw, “Nile River, stream (of the Nile)”; Heb. parʿōh, “Pharaoh” (Gen. 12:15) from Egyp. pr {3j, “pharaoh, king of Egypt [lit., ‘great house’]”; and Heb. šûšan, “lily, lotus” (1 Kgs. 7:19, 26) from Egyp. ššn, “lotus.”

Bibliography. J. P. Allen, Middle Egyptian Grammar (Cambridge, 2000); J. Baines, “Communication and Display: The Integration of Early Egyptian Art and Writing,” Antiquity 63 (1989): 471-82; J. ¦erný and S. Israelit-Groll, A Late Egyptian Grammar, 4th ed., Studia Pohl, ser. maior 4 (Rome, 1993); A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Thus Wrote “Onchsheshongy”: An Introductory Grammar of Demotic, 2nd ed. SAOC 45 (Chicago, 1991); T. O. Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic (Macon, 1983); A. Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge, 1995).

John R. Huddlestun

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

EGYPTIAN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)