Egyptian Language

Ancient Egyptians believed writing to be a gift from the god Thoth, the historian and scribe of the gods and creator of art, science, and speech. They called their writing mdju netjer, or "words of the gods."

The Egyptians held the written language in high regard and believed it was a form of permanence, which meant that inscribing a person's name would keep him or her safe in the afterlife. Coffins, possessions, and tomb walls were inscribed with funeral texts and an individual's name to place that person in the care of the gods. A name written in hieroglyphics was the physical embodiment of a person's identity, and if the written name was lost or destroyed, the person suffered the same fate in the afterlife.

The Egyptian language is one of the oldest of all written languages after Sumerian cuneiform from Mesopotamia. Some evidence shows that Egyptians used pictograph writing before the Sumerians, which led to the conclusion that the two languages developed around the same time. It was not until the Rosetta Stone was discovered and translated in the nineteenth century that the Egyptian language, people, and culture were able to be explored, studied, and transcribed.

History and Classification

Egypt was the earliest civilization to develop in Africa. The Egyptian language is classified as part of the Afroasiatic group. Approximately 250 Afroasiatic languages are based in the Middle East, North Africa, and a large part of Northeastern and Central Africa. The Egyptian language is grouped into five periods: Old Egyptian, Middle/Classical Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic.

Old Egyptian used for official, funeral, and biographical inscriptions is dated from 3100 to 2200 BCE. The oldest surviving examples of Egyptian writing date to 3250 BCE, but this was used primarily to record royal names and possessions. After the establishment of the Old Kingdom in 2625 BCE, Egyptian was used for religious purposes and carvings in palaces, temples, and tombs and on jewelry and tools. Its Middle/Classical form used about seven hundred hieroglyphics from about 2000 BCE to 1650 BCE While the literary language remained the same, the spoken language continued to change and evolve over time.

The detailed hieroglyphics, from the Greek hieros (sacred) and gluphe (carvings), were revered for their artistic beauty and cultural tradition. Their use faded during the period of Roman imperialism and the onset of Christianity and vanished completely by the fifth century CE—along with the knowledge of how to read or translate the script. The last hieroglyphic inscription dates to 396 CE at Philae on a gate post of a temple. However, hieroglyphic writing was not the only form of written Egyptian. From the Protodynastic Period onward, a shortened version called hieratic was used for everyday business and administrative purposes, while intricate hieroglyphs were used for ceremonial and artistic traditions.

Late Egyptian dates from 1600 BCE to 700 BCE. After 700 BCE and until 470 CE, written Egyptian had been further simplified into a shorthand format used for administrative, scientific, literary and secular writings. This script was called Demotic from the Greek demotikos (popular) and was based on spoken language. It was a cursive-type script. By 400 CE, more than 5,000 glyphs were in use. Demotic was called sekh shat (writing for documents) by the Egyptians and was the preferred writing system of the courts.

The last period of Egyptian language was Coptic. The Egyptians adopted the Greek alphabet for their written language, replacing Demotic after the Macedonian conquest of Egypt and the spread of Christianity. Coptic was used extensively until around 1400 CE but Arabic ultimately replaced it as the everyday, official language of Egypt.

Erected in 196 BCE, the Rosetta Stone is the last major text written in Middle Egyptian. It was discovered in 1799 by Pierre Bouchard. The stone is inscribed with three languages: Middle Egyptian, Demotic, and Greek and is considered essential for translating Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Since the fifth century CE, many attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics were made. A crucial misstep in early efforts was that scholars believed each hieroglyphic represented an idea or concept and not sounds, words, or alphabetic representation. The variable meanings of hieroglyphics were discovered in 1822 by Jean-François Champollion.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Egyptian language has the longest continuous use of all languages worldwide. The script included a decimal system reaching up to one million and used detailed hieroglyphics to represent alphabetic characters and entire words. The language evolved over the centuries, but maintained its prominence in Egypt for the duration of its civilization. Although much of Egyptian writing was done on papyrus, which disintegrated or was destroyed, an abundance of stone carvings, temple décor, and other artifacts allowed scholars to discover much about the ancient Egyptian civilization. When transitioning from Demotic to Coptic, the Egyptians kept seven letters that were used to write sounds that did not exist in Greek. For the first time, scholars were able to vocalize the Egyptian language, as previous forms of written Egyptian did not use vowels.

The Egyptian civilization endured for about three thousand years. In the twenty-first century, Egyptian is considered an extinct language. The only exception is the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, which today still uses liturgy texts written in Coptic and teaches the language as part of its religious tradition. The language of modern-day Egypt is Arabic, adopted after the Muslim Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century and the establishment of Islam as the dominant religion. The Egyptian kingdom collapsed in the fourth century BCE to the Persians and Macedonians, yet its culture and language endured despite being under the control of the Romans and Byzantine Empire, bolstered by what became the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt.

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