B. Middle Kingdom (especially the XII. Dynasty, about 2000 a.c.), the classic age. Spellings reach their greatest uniformity and the types of literary composition are most di versified. The folk-speech of this period forms a distinct dialect, just as the common speech of to-day differs from the cultivated literary style.
C. Empire (especially the XVIII-XIX. Dynasties, about 1580-1200 a.c.). Tomb and temple inscriptions in hieroglyphic are modeled on classic forms; but from these the folk-lan guage has already diverged so widely that it deserves the distinctive name New Egyptian.
D. Renaissance or Restoration (XXVI. Dynasty, 663-525 p.c.). Imitation of Old Kingdom writing and ideas. But the hiero glyphs thus reused have passed out of current knowledge. The colloquial language of this age is named after its cursive system of writ ing, the demotic.
E. The Graeco-Ronfon Age (332 B.c.-4th century A.D.) used for ordinary purposes a later stage of the demotic. But its temple inscrip tions were couched in absolutely artificial hiero glyphic systems which exhibit an abundance of new signs and new values.
F. The Coptic (3d century A.D. ff.) is the last phase of the old Egyptian tongue, trans literated from the demotic into Greek char acters when Christianity was introduced into Egypt. Though now a dead language, one dia lect is still in official use by the Coptic Church, paralleling Latin in the Roman Catholic.
The Egyptian linguistic principles show kin ship with East and North African language groups and likewise with the Semitic tongues of neighboring Arabia and Palestine, As in the latter, the essence of a word is contained in its root, the consonantal framework left after excluding prefixes or affixes, while its particular application depends on these latter or (more commonly) on only the accompanying vowel sounds. The effect is as though ram, arm, army, r,eant, aroma and roomy in English were all related concepts based on a root rm. The context is expected to suggest the proper vocal ization. The resultant mental attitude reckons consonants alone as making up the alphabet, The Egyptian alphabetic hieroglyphs (as ar ranged by modern scientists), with their sym bols and English equivalents, are: the th-sound as in thin; later confused with 1.
really a more emphatic t, the Hebrew is (Tech); the Egyptian seems to have had no real d sound.
etymologically =Hebrew 2 (Sadhe); later confused with the preceding d. The d, where it has pre served its individuality, has in Coptic a j-sound.
The Egyptian could have written adequately with only these 24 alphabetic characters; but he was too conservative to give up his other hard won hieroglyphs. All the varieties, phonetic and determinative, thoroughly intermmgled, per sisted to the end. Thus is the clas sic writing of the adjective msh, 'excellent.** The r, pictures an oblong chess-board seen from above, with a group of chessmen upon it in side view, illustrating the Egyptian art prin ciple of faithfulness to known realities rather than to a misshapen modern perspective. It is a phonetic group-sign for mn; the same n is repeated as a so-called 'phonetic complement» by the alphabetic ,vvvv,.... The alphabetic et is followed by t, a word-sign which will inally have pictured a maul mnh, but is found regularly in our transferred meaning instead. The use of the preceding hieroglyphs, which have already stated its phonetic value, is un doubtedly a secondary development intended to facilitate the reading; otherwise the' here might be considered a 'phonetic determinative,' i.e., a determinative not of the sense but of the phonetic group. Unquestioned phonetic deter minatives of parts of words do, indeed, occur.
The J, representing a rolled papyrus document (see below) tied with a cord and sealed with a clay pellet over the knot, is the regular de terminative of abstract terms. The supple menting (not supplanting) of pictorial by pho netic signs, as seen in the above example, means that instead of 24 some 600 signs were in com mon use. Such a system was far more com plicated than our English spelling, and the man who had mastered it in both its monumental and its cursive forms (see below) might well be proud to call himself a scribe. His ac complishment opened for him the pathway to high office.