Among Champollion's followers should be mentioned especially the German Lepsius and his successor at Berlin, Adolf Erman, the father of Egyptian grammar. Another German, Hein rich Brugsch, composed in the years 1866-80 a seven-volume hieroglyphic-demotic dictionary, much of which, and especially the system of transliteration, is long since obsolete. For not until the work was almost completed did the wholly consonantal nature of Egyptian writing become clear. The fact that the Greeks had artificially vocalized with 1, c, y, and w the proper names with which decipherment began is still, indeed, used by some Egyptologists as one evidence for vowels in the Egyptian alphabet. To advance the study of vocabulary as well as grammar, the four learned academies of Ger many have been engaged since 1897 in minutely classifying the words and usages of all avail ableEgyptian texts. Specimen pages of the great (I3erlin Dictionary) which is to result were issued in 1916.
The classic grammatical sys tem may be briefly outlined. Various types of roots (see above) are distinguished, according as they contain two, three (the usual number), four, or even five consonants (called radicals). These may be either strong or weak. The weak consonants (3, y, w) are so called be cause they combine easily with preceding vowel sounds to lengthen them or form diphthongs with them. Hence y and w especially are in many cases omitted from the consonantal writing. The weak roots (those containing weak radicals) are distinguished as I 1, II w, III y, etc. (with the Roman numeral indicating the position of the radical concerned), or, in the case of w and y, which show numerous interchanges, simply I, II or III weak. Another variety of root has the last two radicals (most commonly II and HI) alike. As the Egyptian, besides omitting weak consonants, never wrote two like consonants together except when a vowel sound came between them, these special types of roots assist in determining at least the position, though not the nature, of the unwritten vowels in several verb forms. The Coptic with its Greek characters shows the vowels used at that late date in the tiny fractions of the old vocabulary and grammatical forms which still survived. Other hints of the vocalization are obtained from Greek transliterations of Egyp tian words, and in still fewer cases from the earlier Babylonian and Assyrian.
As in other languages, the verb is the heart of the Egyptian sentence. It follows in some measure the Semitic principle of distinguishing not among present, past and future, but between the finished (perfect) and the still progressing (imperfect) action or condition, in no matter what field of time they lie. The former cor
responds roughly to our past, the latter to our present and future. But the Egyptian-Semitic analogy is very incomplete; so the usual desig nations of Egyptian tenses are taken directly from the paradigm-verb idm, "to hear." The simplest form is the .fdm.f ("he hears"), in which only an enclitic pronoun or a noun fol lows the root as subject of the verb. The con jugation of this tense runs: .fdm•y I hear klm•ts we hear Jam•k thou (m.) hearest am•t thou (f.) hearest .fdm•tn ye hear .film•7 he hears Idm•.fot they hear idtit•i she hears In the earliest texts dual forms also, similar to the plural but with y added (.fdm•ny, "we two hear,' etc.), are found. The consonantal modifications in special types of roots (espe cially the II doubled and III weak) show that this tense was vocalized in at least three differ ent ways, according to the shade of meaning: emphatic, declarative or optative, and circum stantial or conditional respectively.
Though the Icim•f occurs in narrative also, the commonest representative of our past tense the n-form ("he heard"). Other shades of thought are expressed by forms with yn, hr or k l in the place of the n. For the passive, tw is attached just before the subject (e.g., idm.kl.tto•f, 'may he be heard'). The icim•n•tw•f is usually, the passive hint•tw•f sometimes, replaced in the case of noun subjects by a form idm•w•f. A causative conjugation is formed with prefixed (e.g. i.nfr, "to make beautiful,' from nfr, "to be beautiful' ) .
A remnant of an older verbal system, ap parently related to the Semitic perfect, uses in flectional endings, takes no suffix-pronouns, and always follows a noun subject (contraryto the itInt•f usage). As it occurs chiefly in circum stantial clauses, it has been called the pseudo participle. Both this and the Mtn- f system are used with auxiliaries to make compound con jugations closely analogous to such English forms as "I am going,' "I did go,° and "I am to go.* The Egyptian verb is distinguished for one unique development, the relative-form, made in the idm•f and Icim•n•f tenses by inserting masc. w or fern. t after the root. The result ing idm•w•y, kins•1•11•1n, etc., mean '(he) hear," "(she) whom they heard,* etc., and are used as nouns or adjectives.