Hieroglyphs (8 page)

(which differed between individual scribes).

ge

The final stage of the Egyptian language is first attested around the second century ad. At this time Egypt was part of the Roman Empire, which was slowly becoming Christianized. Coptic was used to spread the Christian message into Egypt and to translate Christian writings, mainly the New Testament and life of Christ, into the language spoken in Egypt. It seems, however, that ‘Old Coptic’ was created principally to write magical texts where the exact pronunciation of the words was all important. The language was effectively Demotic in a final form, but it was written in a different script and for the first time Egyptian was written in an alphabetic (uniconsonantal) script. From the second century ad Greek letters were used to write the Egyptian language, but because 31

there were some sounds in Egyptian which did not occur in Greek, the scribes had to borrow a few signs from Demotic and use them along with the Greek alphabet.

from

, f from

, x from

, j from

, q from

This resulting script, the language and culture of Christian Egypt, is known as Coptic. Egyptian Christians or Copts make up one of the greatest religious and cultural minorities in modern Islamic Egypt and, in theory, Coptic is still spoken or at least used in the liturgy in the Coptic (Christian) churches of Egypt. It had died out as a spoken language by the sixteenth century. In ad 641 Egypt was invaded by the Arabs, who brought not only the religion of Islam but also the Arabic language. These largely replaced Christianity and Coptic. Coptic is valuable in studies of Ancient Egyptian because it can help in understanding some of the syntax and vocabulary of Egyptian, but more than anything else it is the nearest
phs

indication there is to the sound of Egyptian, preserving some of the
ogly

words and perhaps the rhythm of the language.

Hier

The true pronunciation of Egyptian is still unknown, although much research has been carried out on this subject. No one living has ever heard Ancient Egyptian spoken, so though it can be read and understood, it cannot be pronounced properly. Coptic hrp,

‘ee-rep’, wine, suggests that this is how the ancient Egyptian word for wine

sounded.

Equivalences:

sn

son

‘son’

brother

itrw

eioor

‘eye-oor’

river

wn

ouoein

‘wey-in’

light

wab

ouop

‘wop’

to be pure

wab

ouhhb

‘weyeb’

priest

wab

ouaab

‘waab’

to be pure/to be holy

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Many words, often with a Christian connotation, were borrowed directly from Greek. The picture is also made a little more complex because Coptic preserves several dialects of Egyptian which were spoken in different regions of Egypt. It has to be recognized that this may reflect a situation in Ancient Egypt, where each region had its own way of pronouncing Egyptian and very possibly different grammatical idioms. Coptic occurs as Sahidic (Upper Egypt), Bohairic (Lower Egypt), Fayumic (Fayum area), and Akhmimic (a region in Upper Egypt) dialects and there may have been more.

If it is difficult to discern local dialects in the surviving Egyptian texts, this may suggest that one of the rationales behind this rigid language was to provide an overarching language which could be understood throughout the country, particularly by
Hi

the administration, while people also had their own versions
eroglyp

of Egyptian.

hic scri

Grammar

pt an

d E

As in any language, there is a full range of grammar in Egyptian
gyptian lan

with rules about how sentences should be constructed. It has nouns (name words), adjectives (describing words, characterization), adverbs (giving additional information about
gua

actions), and verbs (doing words). The latter have tense (events in
ge

the past, present, or future), aspect (the kind of action, either completed or repeated), mood (indicative statements of fact, or subjunctive dependent on something else, or desirable), and voice (active action performed by subject, passive action performed on subject). The word order in Middle Egyptian is different from Western languages: verbs usually come at the beginning of sentences, ‘goes out the man from his house’; adjectives come after the word they describe, ‘He is a scribe, excellent, attentive’; sentences are made up of blocks of ideas in grammatical constructions: ‘*sun with moon* in sky’ contains three basic ideas: (i) ‘the sun and the moon’; (ii) what are they doing? ‘in’ and (iii) where? ‘the sky’. The whole sentence then reads ‘the sun and the moon are in the sky’. Egyptian does not have words for ‘the’ or ‘a’

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(definite and indefinite articles) until Late Egyptian and in many sentences not even for ‘is’ and ‘are’. The fact that Egyptian seems to use markers, such as special words (particles) or constructions (word order) which act like my asterisks above to indicate when certain ideas are in operation or converters to highlight the differences in sentence meaning, is a major conceptual difference between English and Egyptian.

Other areas of language such as emphasis seem to be important in Egyptian and are expressed in other ways in English. For example, the sentence ‘he goes to his house’ naturally throws a certain degree of emphasis onto the subject ‘he’ by the very fact that ‘he’ comes first in the sentence. In Egyptian, the normal word order is for the verb to come first and so, in order to emphasize something other than the verb, various ruses, or grammatical forms, are used. Thus, we have the equivalents of the following, depending on what aspect is most important in the context of the
phs

action or story:

ogly

Hier

‘HE goes to his house’

‘GOES he to his house’

‘TO HIS HOUSE goes he’.

This may seem like a small point but in the context of some Egyptian texts such as hymns, prayers, and literature, which have complex symbolism and ideology, every nuance is important and the various subtleties of grammar changing emphasis or tense are vital to our understanding. It should suggest to the student of the Egyptian language right from the beginning that ideas about language, how it is used, and how it sounds will be different from in European spoken and written languages. In learning Egyptian one is learning a different way of thinking, a different form of expression, and a different background culture. Rather than being a daunting process, this should make the challenge of learning Egyptian more exciting and give much more of an insight into past minds, thought, processes and lives.