古埃及象形文字教材1.docVIP

Last update: 03-aug-1997 Lesson 1?The Egyptian Language and its Script? The Ancient Egyptian Language? Ancient Egyptian belongs to a family of languages in Africa and the Near East that have enough similarities in both grammar and vocabulary to make a common ancestor highly probable. Scientists speak of the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic language group. This group consisted of six branches, one of them being the Ancient-Egyptian language. Other branches were Semitic, Berber, Tsjadic, Koesjitic and Omotic. Only the Egyptian and Semitic languages have an extensive written tradition. In its time Egyptian was of course a living language, which continuously evolved throughout the centuries. According to current resarch, it is possible to distinguish five different phases in the language: Old EgyptianThis is the language we know through inscriptions dating from the Old Kingdom. This is the period from which the first fully developed texts came forward (ca 2700-2200 BC). Middle EgytianThis form of the language was used in the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (ca 2200-1800 BC). Middle Egyptian is regarded as the classical phase of the language, and remained in use in literary, religiuous and monumental inscriptions until late in the Graeco-Roman period. It is this phase of the language that is handled in this on-line course. New EgyptianDuring the New Kingdom the spoken language continued to evolve, while the Middle Egyptian form remained in use as a written language. During the Amarna period (with Echnaton) this tradition was broken, and literary texts were written in New Egyptian (ca 1580-700 BC). An exception to this were the religous texts, were Middle Egyptian remained the written language. DemoticThis is a continuation of New Egyptian, which remained in use well into the Roman period (ca 700 BC - 600 AD). This version of the language already had a tendency to write words alphabetically, by making use of signs having the value of 1 consonant.