Egyptian was anAfroasiatic language that was spoken inAncient Egypt. It has been written 5000 years, which makes it one of the oldest written languages known today. TheCoptic language is the modern form of the Egyptian language. The Egyptian language changed into it over time. TheCopts use it forreligious purposes. Only a few people are still fluent in Coptic.[5] While the modern variant is known, the older variants could only be translated when theRosetta stone was found in 1799. The Rosetta stone contains the same text in three languages, one of which was known at the time.
The oldest records of the Egyptian language date from about 3400 BC.[6]
Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the form of Coptic. Thenational language of modern-dayEgypt isEgyptian Arabic, which replaced Coptic as the language of daily life in the centuries after theMuslim conquest of Egypt.[7]
Archaic Egyptian language (before 2600 BC), the language of theEarly Dynastic period
Old Egyptian language (2686 BC – 2181 BC), the language of theOld Kingdom
Middle Egyptian language (2055 BC – 1650 BC), theMiddle Kingdom (2055 BC – 1650 BC, but lasting until the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt:Amenhotep III,Akhenaten and theAmarna period (1353 BC). It continued as a written language into the 4th century AD.
Late Egyptian language (1069 BC – 700 BC), the Third Intermediate period (1069 BC – 700 BC), but starting earlier with theAmarna period (1353 BC).
Egyptian writing in the form of labels and signs has been dated to 3200 BC. These early texts are generally called "Archaic Egyptian."
In 1999,Archaeology Magazine reported that the earliest Egyptianglyphs date back to 3400 BC which "...challenge the commonly held belief that earlylogographs,pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complexphonetic symbols inMesopotamia."[9]
Old Egyptian was spoken for about 500 years from 2600 BC onwards. Middle Egyptian was spoken from about 2000 BC for a further 700 years when Late Egyptian made its appearance; Middle Egyptian survived until the first few centuries AD as a written language, similar to the use ofLatin during the Middle Ages and that ofClassical Arabic today.Demotic Egyptian first appears about 650 BC and survived as a spoken language until the fifth century AD.Coptic Egyptian appeared in the fourth century AD and survived as a living language until the sixteenth century AD, when European scholars traveled to Egypt to learn it from native speakers during theRenaissance. It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. TheBohairic dialect of Coptic is still used by the Egyptian Christian Churches.
Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written usinghieroglyphs andhieratic. Demotic was written using ascript derived from hieratic; its appearance is vaguely similar to modernArabic script and is also written from right to left. Coptic is written using theCoptic alphabet, a modified form of theGreek alphabet with a number of symbols borrowed from Demotic for sounds that did not occur in contemporaryGreek.
The Bible contains some words, terms and names thought by scholars to be Egyptian in origin. An example of this is Zaphnath-Paaneah, the Egyptian name given toJoseph.
↑ The language may have survived in isolated pockets in Upper Egypt into the 19th century according to James Edward Quibell, "When did Coptic become extinct?" inZeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 39 (1901), p. 87.
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