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Egyptian Language and Writing
Hieroglyphs
The origin of the ancient Egyptian language and writing system is obscure because of its extreme antiquity. Fortunately, the development of the language and writing can be deduced through various stages and scripts from the many surviving inscriptions. The earliest script used for writing the language, known today as “Egyptian hieroglyphs” or “hieroglyphs,” was in use before 3100 BC. Hieroglyphs (which literally means “sacred carvings”) were developed from pictures of objects or things (pictographs), and they always retained their pictorial form. In fact, the ancient Egyptians never developed a truly alphabetic system in which each symbol, sign, or letter represented a simple sound in the language. By c.3100 BC, however, and perhaps earlier, there was already in use a fully comprehensive language system expressed in the written form with its own syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. Hieroglyphs continued to be used, simultaneous with other writing systems, for inscriptions on papyrus, wood, and stone for over 3,000 years, often employed for formal or religious purposes. The classical stage of the language, known today as “Middle Egyptian,” developed during the Middle Kingdom (c.1900 BC) when some of the finest literary texts were composed. Modern students of Egyptian hieroglyphs are introduced to the language and script by learning Middle Egyptian. The last known hieroglyphic inscription (AD 394) in Egypt survives on one of the monuments originally constructed on the island of Philae and now rebuilt on the neighboring island of Agilkia.
PICTOGRAPHS
The Egyptian system grew out of pictographs simple drawings of
objects that prehistoric peoples knew and saw around them, which
they used as symbols to represent the words for the objects in their
particular language. Such pictographs would also be visually
recognizable to people who had a different language (for example,
people with different languages would all recognize that a
pictograph of a man represented a man), but they would not be able
to identify from the pictograph the correct word for “man” in
another language. Although pictographs can convey the meaning of
concrete objects (house, man, fish, to eat), they cannot express
more abstract ideas (emotions, thoughts, beliefs) nor tenses of a
verb and nuances of the language.
. PHONOGRAMS AND IDEOGRAMS To expand and develop their ability to write their language the Egyptians, at an early stage, introduced a system that combined phonograms and ideograms. Phonograms are “sound signs” and represent the individual sounds which make up the words in a language. In effect they “spell out” each word. The important difference between phonograms and pictographs is that, whereas pictographs can be recognized and understood by people who speak different languages, phonograms (although they can be pictorial in form) represent sound values in a particular language and can only be understood by people who know that language. For example, in hieroglyphs one use of the phonogram depicting an owl is to convey the sound “m.” There are three types of phonograms in hieroglyphs: uniliteral or alphabetic signs, where one hieroglyph (picture) represents a single consonant or sound value; biliteral signs, where one hieroglyph represents two consonants; and triliteral signs, where one hieroglyph represent three consonants. There are twenty-four hieroglyphic signs in the Egyptian alphabet and these are the phonograms most commonly used. But since there was never a purely alphabetic system, these signs were placed alongside other phonograms (biliterals and triliterals) and ideograms. Ideograms are “sense signs” that pictorially convey the meaning of a word; they are never pronounced. They were often placed at the end of a word (spelled out in phonograms) to clarify the meaning of that word, and when used in this way we refer to them as “determinatives.” This assists in two ways: The addition of a determinative helps to clarify the meaning of a particular word, since some words look similar or identical to each other when spelled out and written down only in the phonograms; and because determinatives stand at the end of the word they can indicate where one word ends and another begins. . Hieratic and Demotic Although hieroglyphs continued in use for the whole of Egyptian history, two cursive scripts (hieratic and demotic) were developed from the hieroglyphic signs to provide increased speed in writing, particularly for business and literary texts. . HIERATIC Hieratic appeared in the earliest dynasties as a contemporary writing form in parallel use with hieroglyphs. It continued in use until c.800 BC when it was gradually replaced first by a new cursive script (“abnormal hieratic”) in southern Egypt and then by demotic. Each hieratic character was a simplification of a hieroglyphic sign, but it is possible to identify an early hieratic text from a later one because the script developed over the centuries and is marked by changes in the way the signs were written and grouped together. Both hieratic and hieroglyphs could be written either vertically or horizontally. Until the Middle Kingdom it was commonplace to arrange hieratic in vertical columns; it later became customary to write it horizontally. Hieroglyphs could be written from right to left or vice versa (the direction in which the hieroglyphs should be read is indicated by the direction in which the pictographs of humans, animals, or birds face if they face left the inscription reads from left to right, and vice versa). In hieratic, however, the direction of writing was always from right to left. Whereas hieroglyphs frequently fulfilled a monumental function and were carved on stone, hieratic was written on cheaper materials such as papyrus, wood, leather, or ostraca (inscribed pottery sherds or stone flakes). From hieratic inscribed on papyrus, however, there developed another script cursive writing on stone which appears on stelae left in the quarries by masons and travelers. Hieratic was used for many purposes: There were religious texts (hence its name meaning “sacred writing”), magical texts, letters, administrative and legal documents such as accounts, wills, reports, and lists, as well as literary and scientific texts. It was regularly employed for writing on papyrus with a brush (made from a reed with a frayed tip) and black or red ink (which indicated where a new paragraph began). Use of the brush was eventually replaced (third century BC) by a stylus (a sharpened reed with a fine point), which substantially changed the appearance of the signs. . DEMOTIC From c.700 BC another cursive script was introduced. This was used for business, legal, and literary documents for nearly 1,000 years, although hieratic was retained alongside it mainly for religious texts, and hieroglyphs continued to be used for inscriptions on stone. This new development in the language and writing of Egypt is known as demotic (“popular writing”), a term that Herodotus first used for it. It incorporated new and distinct grammatical forms as well as a new vocabulary. Demotic was apparently derived from a type of Egyptian spoken originally in the Delta, and although the earliest writings in this script are lost, it apparently spread southward when the princes of Sais (a Delta town) conquered the rest of Egypt and established Dynasty 26. Although demotic is derived from business hieratic and therefore ultimately from hieroglyphs, it has many complications and is relatively difficult to read and translate.
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Coptic
The final stage of the Egyptian language known as Coptic developed when Egypt became a Christian country. The Copts (Christian inhabitants of Egypt) retained their language, which incorporated ancient Egyptian dialects, and wrote it down in Greek alphabetic characters with the addition of a few new signs taken from demotic to express Egyptian sounds that did not occur in Greek. The use of Greek characters enabled writers to produce the full pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian language because Greek had vowels, whereas the Egyptian scripts expressed only the consonants. The ancient Egyptian language and scripts had been replaced as the official language by Greek following the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and subsequent rulership by the Ptolemies. Greek was now employed for administrative purposes, although the native population continued to use their own language, and formal and religious texts were still inscribed in hieroglyphs on temples and elsewhere. Coptic played an important role in early Christianity in Egypt, and from the third century AD it became the medium for the translation of the books of the Old Testament and the Gospels, and, during the third and fourth centuries, versions of the heretical Gnostic and Manichean writings. A key factor in the development of Egyptian Christianity was the strength of the national church, which at the Council of Ephesus (451) adopted the Monophysite belief and separated itself from western Christianity. At the same time, there was also a widespread growth of monasteries throughout the country. Religious art and literature flourished against this background, and important Coptic writings were produced by St. Athanasius (c.293–c.373) and monks such as St. Anthony (251–356) and Pachomius (286–346). Although the Arab invasion of Egypt in the seventh century and the introduction of Islam brought radical changes, strong Christian communities still survived, particularly in the south and around Thebes. Arabic became the official language of the country, but Coptic was retained as the language of the Christians for many centuries. The great scriptoria at the monasteries were closed by the tenth century, but Coptic influences remained strong in villages of southern Egypt until the fourteenth century. Today, Coptic is still used for the liturgy of the Coptic Church, although the language of modern Egypt is Arabic. In historical terms Coptic played a very important role in the decipherment of hieroglyphs, since it provided a link between the ancient language of Egypt and the Classical and later European traditions. As Christianity grew and spread throughout Egypt knowledge of ancient Egyptian, written in hieroglyphs, hieratic, or demotic, was finally lost, and Coptic remained the only link with that past. However, until it was recognized that Coptic had developed directly out of those earlier scripts, it was of little use in deciphering hieroglyphs. Once it was identified as the final stage of the language, it became important in illuminating aspects of Egyptian grammar and vocabulary. Notable studies in the Coptic language were produced by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–80), although he is perhaps best known for proposing the erroneous symbolic theory of hieroglyphs that regarded individual signs as symbols. Knowledge of Coptic also helped Johan David Akerblad (1763–1819) in his work on the Egyptian scripts, and Thomas Young (1773–1824) correctly proposed a close association between hieroglyphs and Coptic. Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) began his illustrious academic career at age sixteen by reading a paper to the Grenoble Academy in which he claimed that Coptic (which he had learned, together with Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Sanskrit, Zand, Pali, Parsi, and Persian, to prepare himself for the decipherment of hieroglyphs) was the same as the ancient language of Egypt, although it was written in different characters from the ancient scripts of hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic. Following the decipherment of hieroglyphs Coptic continued to assist scholars in their attempts to unravel the scripts and grammar of the ancient Egyptian language. .
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Pronunciation
It is not generally known how the Egyptians pronounced their language. Over the 3,000 years that it was used there would have been many changes and variations. Coptic (the final stage of Egyptian) can provide some clues regarding the pronunciation of individual words, since it conveys vowel sounds through the Greek characters (whereas hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic only preserve the consonants in each word). However, since Coptic was in use only at the end of the period when Egyptian was spoken, it cannot reflect the many changes and variations in grammar and pronunciation that would have occurred during that time. Nevertheless, Egyptologists need to be able to refer to words orally, so a convenient method of pronunciation has been developed in which scholars use a generally accepted (although artificial) system of vocalizing the words. This addition of vowels, however, may bear little resemblance to the way in which the ancient Egyptians actually pronounced the words. Scholars of different nationalities also need a common system for identifying and transcribing individual hieroglyphs before they translate them into their own language. Thus, they first transliterate the hieroglyphs (turn them into modern written characters) before they translate a text. .
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Egyptian Language and Writing
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