Ancient Egypt—The language of the Old Kingdom

1. Ancient Egypt—The language of the Old Kingdom Liubov Shafirovich ENG 583 November 10, 2011

2. Focus of the presentation • The focus will be on Old Egyptian, which is the language used during the Old Kingdom time period of Ancient Egypt. The Outline • General information on Ancient Egyptian language. • Stages of the language. • Facts on Ancient Egyptian from the Old Kingdom era. • Conclusion. • Sources.

3. General information on Ancient Egyptian language • The language belongs to Afro-Asiatic language family. • It is now a dead language, like Latin. • First writing of the language appeared around 3200 B.C. • Writing in Egypt has always had royal context and probably developed under this setting. • Interestingly, ancient languages from Afro-Asiatic family are known only from preserved written texts, whereas many modern Afro-Asiatic languages that were recorded in recent times have no written form. (Bard, K., 2008, p.25).

4. Stages of Ancient Egyptian language • The language had six stages: Archaic Egyptian, Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. • Names of the stages correspond more or less to the time periods when they were used. • Archaic stage was the earliest one and was used until 2600 B.C. when it was overtaken by Old Egyptian. • The language had three scripts: Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, and Demotic • Hieroglyphs was one of the earliest scripts and developed around 3200 B.C. • Hieratic developed around the same time as hieroglyphs; it is a more abstract form of hieroglyphs and is written in ink, unlike hieroglyphs which are carved. • Demotic developed much later, around the first millennium B.C.

5. Old Egyptian • Used during the Old Kingdom era, from 2600 to 2000 B.C • Prior to the Old Kingdom era, the writing was not standardized; there was no consecutive speech in writing, which is why the earliest texts are incompletely understood. • Full syntax was being written down during the Old Kingdom era. • In other words, the syntax developed approximately 600 years after the writing did!

6. Old Egyptian (cont.) • Used Hieroglyphs and Hieratic only. • A Hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative. • The same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. • Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on monuments and in tombs and could be as detailed as individual works of art. • Writing was primarily an occupation of the scribes. • Note that the Hieratic, not Hieroglyphs was used in day-to-day life, as it was quicker and easier to write. • Hieroglyphs could be read in rows or columns in either direction. • Hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows.

7. Old Egyptian (cont.) • The language did not write vowels, which made it very hard to reconstruct the pronunciation. • It did not have any punctuation signs. • No space between words. • Verb-subject-object word order. • Nouns had gender distinction (feminine or masculine) as well as number distinction (singular, plural, or dual). • Adjectives agree in gender and number with their nouns.

8. Old Egyptian (cont.) • Very few words of Egyptian origin are found in English. • Some examples are ivory, ebony, pharaoh, Susan (literally means “lily flower”), Phinehas(used as a generic term for Nubian foreigners).

9. Preserved written texts from Old Egyptian • Hieroglyphic texts on the walls of tombs of private individuals (not necessarily royalty). • The earliest royal mortuary texts, also known as the Pyramid Texts, are found in the inner chambers of the pyramids. • Sadly, many old texts were written on perishable papyrus and are now lost.

10. Conclusion This was just a mere glimpse into the language of the Old Kingdom era. There are many more details on the language that can be found, including the details over the language’s phonology, morphology, grammar, and pronunciation, to name just a few. It is impossible to discuss all of those details in this one presentation, so I chose only a few that seemed to be especially interesting to me. I hope this presentation was entertaining and educational.

11. Good Bye!

12. References Bard, K. (2008). An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Grimal, N. (1988). A history of Ancient Egypt. Translated by Ian Shaw. Blackwell Publishers Shafirovich, L. (2009). Egyptian language. PowerPoint presentation for the course on Historical Linguistics. Shaw, I. (2003). Exploring Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. Discovering Ancient Egypt by Mark Millmore. http://www.eyelid.co.uk/index.htm. Accessed October 29, 2011 Egyptian Language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_language. Accessed October 29, 2011 AncientEgypt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt. Accessed October 29, 2011. Old Kingdom of Egypt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Kingdom. Accessed October 29, 2011