Main article: Egyptian language

Ancient Egyptian constitutes an independent part of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. Its closest relatives are the Berber, Semitic, and Beja groups of languages. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3200 BC, making it one of the oldest, and longest documented languages. Scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions:[8]

Archaic Egyptian (before 3000 BC)

Consists of inscriptions from the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing appears on Naqada II pottery vessels.

Old Egyptian (3000–2000 BC)

The language of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. Tomb walls of elite Egyptians from this period also bear autobiographical writings representing Old Egyptian. One of its distinguishing characteristics is the tripling of ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from the next stage.

Middle Egyptian (2000–1300 BC)

Often dubbed Classical Egyptian, this stage is known from a variety of textual evidence in hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts dated from about the Middle Kingdom. It includes funerary texts inscribed on sarcophagi such as the Coffin Texts; wisdom texts instructing people on how to lead a life that exemplified the ancient Egyptian philosophical worldview (see the Ipuwer papyrus); tales detailing the adventures of a certain individual, for example the Story of Sinuhe; medical and scientific texts such as the Edwin Smith Papyrus and the Ebers papyrus; and poetic texts praising a deity or a pharaoh, such as the Hymn to the Nile. The Egyptian vernacular had already begun to change from the written language as evidenced by some Middle Kingdom hieratic texts, but classical Middle Egyptian continued to be written in formal contexts well into the Late Dynastic period (sometimes referred to as Late Middle Egyptian).[8]

Late Egyptian (1300–700 BC)

Records of this stage appear in the second part of the New Kingdom. It contains a rich body of religious and secular literature, comprising such famous examples as the Story of Wenamun and the Instructions of Ani. It was also the language of Ramesside administration. Late Egyptian is not totally distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than that between Middle and Old Egyptian. It is also a better representative than Middle Egyptian of the spoken language in the New Kingdom and beyond. Hieroglyphic orthography saw an enormous expansion of its graphemic inventory between the Late Dynastic and Ptolemaic periods.

Demotic Egyptian (700 BC–300 AD)
Coptic (300–1700 AD)

Writing

See also: Egyptian hieroglyphs

The Rosetta stone is a multilingual text written in hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek, and enabled linguists to begin the process of hieroglyph decipherment.
The Rosetta stone is a multilingual text written in hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek, and enabled linguists to begin the process of hieroglyph decipherment.[8]

For many years, the earliest known hieroglyphic inscription was the Narmer Palette, found during excavations at Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar) in the 1890s, which has been dated to c.3150 BC. However, recent archaeological findings reveal that symbols on Gerzean pottery, c. 3250 BC, resemble the traditional hieroglyph forms. Also in 1998 a German archaeological team under Günter Dreyer excavating at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) uncovered tomb U-j, which belonged to a Predynastic ruler, and they recovered three hundred clay labels inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs dating to the Naqada IIIA period, circa 3300 BC.

Egyptologists refer to Egyptian writing as hieroglyphs, today standing as the world's earliest known writing system. The hieroglyphic script was partly syllabic, partly ideographic. Hieratic is a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs and was first used during the First Dynasty (c. 2925 BC – c. 2775 BC). The term Demotic, in the context of Egypt, came to refer to both the script and the language that followed the Late Ancient Egyptian stage, i.e. from the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt until its marginalization by Greek Koine in the early centuries AD. After the conquest of Amr ibn al-A'as in the 700s AD, the Coptic language survived as a spoken language into the Middle Ages. Today, it continues to be the liturgical language of a Christian minority.[8]

Beginning from around 2700 BC, Egyptians used pictograms to represent vocal sounds — ignoring vowels and representing only consonant vocalizations (see Hieroglyph: Script). By 2000 BC, 26 pictograms were being used mainly to represent twenty-four (known) vocal sounds, but hundreds of other signs also were being employed.[8] The world's oldest known alphabet (c. 1800 BC) is only an abjad system and was derived from these uniliteral signs as well as other Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The hieroglyphic script finally fell out of use around the 300 AD. Attempts to decipher it in the West began after the fifteenth century, though earlier attempts by Muslim scholars are attested (see Hieroglyphica).

Literature

See also: Ancient Egyptian literature

The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus, a document that describes anatomical observations and the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of traumatic injuries.
The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus, a document that describes anatomical observations and the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of traumatic injuries.

Writing first appears associated with kingship, labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. This developed by the Old Kingdom into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Instructions evolved to provide teachings and guidance from famous nobles, the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is an extreme example of an instruction, although from an uncertain date. During the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, the prose style of literature evolved, with the Story of Sinuhe perhaps being the classic of Egyptian Literature.[32] Also written at this time (although the surviving copies date from the end of the Second Intermediate Period), the Westcar Papyrus is a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests.[33] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the Story of Wenamun tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon, and his struggle to return to Egypt, and shows the end of the united Egypt, and the start of the Third Intermediate Period, a period of turmoil known as Whm Mswt.

Culture

Architecture