LANGUAGE. Egyptian belonged to the Hamitic family of speech, of which the principal modern representatives are the Galla, Somali, and Bishari of eastern Africa, and the Berber Ian 1_,ruages of northern Africa. Egyptian itself shows an undeniable relationship to the Scinitie languages. though it is not yet determined whether this relationship depends upon au early conquest of the Nile Valley by Semites, or upon a primitive kinship between the peoples of the Hamitic and Semitic stocks. The oldest monu ments of the Egyptian language go back to •11)0Dt. B.C. 1000, and it did not die out as a spoken language until about three centuries ago. lu the course of its Wig history it naturally underwent many changes. The language of the Old Empire, for example, was no more intelligible to an Egyp tian of the Nineteenth Dynasty than Latin would be to the average Italian of the present day. distinguish the following chief periods of the language: (I) Old Egyptian. the classical language of the Old Empire. Long after it had ceased to be spoken. it led an artificial existence as a learned language, playing much the same part as Latin played in medieval Europe, and was regularly employed for religious and monumental purposes down to the Boman period. Careful philological training was not, however, a distinguishing characteristic of the Egyptian scribes, and therefore texts composed in Old after n.c. 1000 are all bad imitations of earlier monuments: these written alter n.c. 500 are barbarous. The best grammar of Old Egyptian is Erman, AM/gyp/iv-he (Jo/inn/attic, (Berlin. 1894: English trans.. London, 1894). (2) _Middle Egyptian. the popular language of the .fiddle Empire. It represents an intermedi ate stage between the language of the Old and that of the New Empire. \lost of the old forms and inflections are retained, hut some of the pe culiarities of the later speech begin to make their appearance. This stage of Egyptian is treated by Erman in his Die Spraehe des Papyrus •estcar (Gottingen. 1889). (3) Neo-Egyptian, the popu lar language of the New Empire (about n.c. 1500 1000). It is represented by a considerable number of papyri written exclusively in the hierat ic character, and containing chiefly talcs. poems. letters, and legal documents. This period of the language is exhaustively treated in Erman. Neuliayptisehe Grammatik (leiHig% 1ti891. (4) Late Egyptian, the popular language in use from about n.c. 700 to the Christian Era. It is often called demotic, but this is not strictly correct, since the term demotic properly designates not the language of this period, but the script in which it is written. Late Egyptian is repre sented by a large number of papyri written in the demotic script. They contain chiefly legal and commercial documents, letters, and magical texts, together with a few tales. There is no good treat ment of this subject. The best is by Brugseh, Gram maire denwtique (Paris, 1855), but that is anti quated. (5) Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt, and the latest descendant of Old Egyp tian. It is written in a modification of the Greek alphabet with the addition of some characters derived from demotic. and in its vocabulary it has borrowed freely from the Creek. A number of local dialects may be distinguished. As a spoken language it died out only about 300 years ago, and it is still employed as the ritual lan guage of the Coptic Church. Coptic possesses an extensive literature. which is almost entirely of a religious character and includes many trans lations from Greek works. The standard gram
mar of the language is Stern, Tioptisehe Gram matik ( Leipzig. I SSO) Steindorfl% Kontisehe Grammatik Merlin. 1.1941, is, however, batter adapted to the needs of beginners. Both Erman's Altagyptisehr Grammatik and Steindi•ar, Kop tim.be Grarnmatik contain useful hildiograpbies, which together cover all the periods of the lan guage.
In Egyptian, as in the Semitic languages, tri consonantal sterns prevailed, though even in the oldest texts many stems hail been reduced by eerruption to a bi-consonantal scheme. Quad riliterals and quinquiliterals were formed, chiefly by partial reduplication. As in Coptie, each word had hut one full vowel, which stood either in the penult or ultima. ln closed syllables it was short: in open syllables it was long. The accent of a word rested upon the syllable con taining the full vowel. As in Semitic, each word or syllable must begin with a consonant. The language possessed both independent and suffixed personal pronouns, which were employed much as in Semitic. The number of the demonstrative pronouns is considerable. ln Old Egyptian there no article: the definite article first comes into use in _Middle Egyptian. and the indefinite article in Neo-Egyptian. In the substantive and in the verb, two genders were distinguished, masculine and feminine, the latter standing also for the neuter. As in Semitic, the feminine end ing of the substantive was t. There were three nuinbers—singular, dual, and plural, each dis tinguished by special endings, but the dual early became obsolete. The old inflection of the verb, formed by the addition of certain pronomina' endings to the stem. resembled the Semitic per fect, and distinguished, apparently by difference of vocalization, an active-passive and a passive intransitive form but the former was almost obsolete at the time of the earliest texts. The later inflection was formed by suffixing a per sonal pronoun to a participial form. Both active and passive forms are distinguished. Auxiliary verbs are found in the oldest texts; in the later stages of the language. they are employed with increasing frequency. and in ('optic, with the ex ception of a few survivals, conjugation by means of auxiliary verbs in combination with the in finitive or participle has entirely supplanted the older modes of inflection. A causative was formed by prefixing .c to the stein, and it is prob able that other derived conjugations may have existed at a very remote period. There are, at least, traces of a reflexive form with prefixed a, like the Semitic Niphal. The verb also formed a participle, an imperative. and an infinitive: the last named had both maseuline and femi nine forms and was treated like a noun. The genitive relation was originally expressed by simple juxtaposition. the accent. as in the Semitie construct connection. shifting to the second word. 1 t was later expressed by means of a particle (originally a demonstrative pronoun) placed before the roam rectum. The stnieture of the sentence was generally simple. The pre vailing order was verb. subject, direct object. in direct object. This. however, might be modified by special circumstances. A pronoun. for ex ample, preceded a noun, and a word might be placed out of the usual order for the sake of emphasis. Consult, in addition to the gram matieal works cited above: Settle, Das iigyptisehe l'erbum (Leipzig. 1899-190•). and Erman, "Die des ligyptischen Verbums." in Sit:antis beriek te der kiinialiehen prcussisehen .1kademie der ll'i.s.crnsfhaftrn zu Nix. (1900).