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Middle Egyptian
Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts.
It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a
series of twenty-five essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion and literature.
The combination of grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users not only to read hieroglyphic texts but also to
understand them, providing the foundation for understanding texts on monuments and reading great works of ancient
Egyptian literature in the original.
This second edition contains revised exercises and essays, providing an up-to-date account of current research and
discoveries. New illustrations enhance discussions and examples. These additions combine with the previous edition to
create a complete grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and
other fields.
James P. Allen is the Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. He is a former curator of Egyptian art at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and president of the International Association of Egyptologists. His
previous publications include Genesis in Egypt: the Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (1989), The Heqanakht
Papyri (2002), and The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005).
Middle Egyptian
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
OF HIEROGLYPHS
JAMES P. ALLEN
SECOND EDITION, REVISED
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
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© James P. Allen 2010
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the
provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part
may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2010
ISBN-13
978-0-511-77617-5
eBook (NetLibrary)
ISBN-13
978-0-521-51796-6
Hardback
ISBN-13
978-0-521-74144-6
Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
...................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................
viii
ix
Lesson 11 Egyptian Language and Writing .......................................................................... 1
Language ........................................................................................................... 1
Writing ............................................................................................................. 2
Essay 1Ancient Egyptian History ...................................................................... 9
Exercise 1 ......................................................................................................... 12
Lesson 12. The Sounds of Middle Egyptian ....................................................................... 13
Essay 2. Ancient Egyptian Geography ................................................................ 21
Exercise 2 ......................................................................................................... 23
Lesson 13. Multiliteral Signs .............................................................................................. 25
Essay 3. Ancient Egyptian Society ..................................................................... 33
Exercise 3 ......................................................................................................... 35
Lesson 14. Nouns .............................................................................................................. 37
Essay 4. The Gods ............................................................................................. 45
Exercise 4 ......................................................................................................... 48
Lesson 15. Pronouns .......................................................................................................... 49
Essay 5. The Gods on Earth ............................................................................... 57
Exercise 5 ......................................................................................................... 60
Lesson 16. Adjectives ......................................................................................................... 61
Essay 6. The King’s Names ................................................................................ 66
Exercise 6 ......................................................................................................... 68
Lesson 17. Adjectival and Nominal Sentences .................................................................... 69
Adjectival Sentences ......................................................................................... 69
Nominal Sentences ........................................................................................... 72
Uses of Adjectival and Nominal Sentences ........................................................ 79
Essay 7. Human Nature .................................................................................... 81
Exercise 7 ......................................................................................................... 83
Lesson 18. Prepositions and Adverbs .................................................................................. 85
Prepositions ...................................................................................................... 85
Adverbs ............................................................................................................ 94
Essay 8. Death and the Afterlife ......................................................................... 96
Exercise 8 ......................................................................................................... 99
Lesson 19. Numbers ........................................................................................................ 101
Essay 9. Egyptian Chronology ......................................................................... 109
Exercise 9 ....................................................................................................... 111
v
Lesson 10. Adverbial Sentences ........................................................................................
Essay 10. Maat ................................................................................................
Exercise 10 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 11. Nonverbal Sentences ......................................................................................
Essay 11. The World Before Creation ..............................................................
Exercise 11 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 12. Nonverbal Clauses ..........................................................................................
Relative Clauses .............................................................................................
Noun Clauses .................................................................................................
Adverb Clauses ...............................................................................................
Essay 12. The Creation of the World ................................................................
Exercise 12 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 13. Verbs ..............................................................................................................
Essay 13. The Creative Word ...........................................................................
Exercise 13 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 14. The Infinitival Forms ......................................................................................
The Infinitive .................................................................................................
The Negative Infinitive and Negatival Complement .......................................
The Complementary Infinitive .......................................................................
Essay 14. The Memphite Theology ..................................................................
Exercise 14 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 15. The Pseudoverbal Construction ......................................................................
Essay 15. The Creator .....................................................................................
Exercise 15 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 16. The Imperative and Particles ...........................................................................
Particles ..........................................................................................................
Essay 16. Heresy .............................................................................................
Exercise 16 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 17. The Stative .....................................................................................................
Essay 17. Phonology and Writing ....................................................................
Exercise 17 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 18. The Perfect ....................................................................................................
Essay 18 Egyptian Literature ..........................................................................
Exercise 18 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 19. The Subjunctive .............................................................................................
Essay 19. Middle Egyptian Wisdom Literature .................................................
Exercise 19 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 20. The Perfective and Imperfective ......................................................................
Essay 20. Middle Egyptian Stories ...................................................................
Exercise 20 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 21. The Prospective and Passive ............................................................................
The Prospective ..............................................................................................
The Passive .....................................................................................................
vi
113
119
121
123
130
131
133
134
140
143
147
149
151
160
162
163
163
174
175
176
178
179
185
188
189
192
200
203
205
222
225
227
243
246
249
262
265
267
284
287
289
289
294
The Forms of the sÿm.f ..................................................................................
Essay 21. Historical Texts .................................................................................
Exercise 21 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 22. The Other Forms of the Suffix Conjugation ...................................................
The sÿm.jn.f ....................................................................................................
The sÿm.ãr.f ....................................................................................................
The sÿm.kæ.f ...................................................................................................
The sÿmt.f ......................................................................................................
The Parenthetics .............................................................................................
Essay 22. Religious Texts .................................................................................
Exercise 22 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 23. The Participles ................................................................................................
Essay 23. Hymns and Poetry ...........................................................................
Exercise 23 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 24. The Relative Forms ........................................................................................
Essay 24. Nonliterary Texts ..............................................................................
Exercise 24 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 25. Special Uses of the Relative Forms .................................................................
Nominal Uses .................................................................................................
Emphatic Uses ................................................................................................
General Considerations ...................................................................................
Essay 25. Letters ..............................................................................................
Exercise 25 .....................................................................................................
Lesson 26. Middle Egyptian Grammar .............................................................................
Theory ...........................................................................................................
Where to Go From Here ................................................................................
Sign List ..........................................................................................................................
Dictionary .......................................................................................................................
Answers to the Exercises .................................................................................................
Index ...............................................................................................................................
vii
299
301
305
307
307
310
312
314
318
321
324
325
348
351
353
368
370
373
374
379
391
396
399
401
416
421
425
455
475
497
List of Figures
1. The Egyptian view of the world
12. Map of Egypt
...................................................................................
21
..............................................................................................................
24
13. Minoans and Nubians bringing tribute
.........................................................................
14. Ramesses III worshipping the gods Re-Harakhti, Atum, Iuesaas, and Hathor
.................
47
....................................................................................
59
.........................................................................................
82
15. Procession of the bark of Amun
16. The ba visiting the mummy
17. The ba emerging from the false door
18. The weighing of the heart
35
...........................................................................
98
............................................................................................
98
19. Maat in the tomb of Haremhab
..................................................................................
119
10. King Haremhab and Nefertum
...................................................................................
131
11. Sia and Heka accompanying the Sun
..........................................................................
12. Ptah, Amun, Ramesses II, and Re in the temple of Abu Simbel
...................................
187
.................................................
202
............................................................................................
248
13. Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their three oldest daughters
14. Ancient Egyptian scribes
161
15. The Annals of Thutmose III in Karnak
.......................................................................
304
16. Sarcophagus of Mentuhotep, head end
........................................................................
306
.............................................................................................
350
17. Blind harper and singers
18. Problems in geometry from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
....................................
369
...............................................................................
372
20. The letter illustrated in Fig. 19 as found, folded, addressed, and sealed ..........................
398
19. A letter of Heqanakht on papyrus
viii
Preface
The decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one of the great success stories
of modern archeology. Before 1822, the civilization of ancient Egypt was mute and mysterious, its
images bizarre and incomprehensible to a world convinced that all thought of any worth began
with the ancient Greeks. Today we are able to read the ancient Egyptian texts and, more importantly, to understand for the most part what they meant to the people who wrote them. In the
process we have discovered a world of rich imagination, sophisticated thought, and profoundly
moving emotion.
Despite the remarkable achievement behind this discovery, however, the language of the ancient texts remains inaccessible to all but a handful of scholars. There are any number of good and
widely available translations of ancient Egyptian texts, but the same cannot be said for studies of
the Egyptian language itself. Those who want to be able to read the texts for themselves, to understand the inscriptions on monuments in Egypt or in museums, or simply to learn a fascinating
ancient language for its own sake soon discover that this is no easy task. Though grammars of ancient Egyptian do exist, they are usually intended as reference works for specialists and are difficult
for anyone but the most dedicated student to learn from. Most of them are also obsolete in some
respects, reflecting an understanding of Egyptian grammar that is outdated or incomplete. A number of excellent grammars for the beginning student have appeared in recent years, but these are
generally in languages other than English or are not easily accessible.
The present book has been written to address this shortcoming. It is designed to be usable by
interested nonspecialists who want to learn Egyptian on their own as well as by students following
a course of professional instruction. Its lessons and exercises offer a solid foundation in Middle
Egyptian, the language of most hieroglyphic inscriptions and the classical speech of ancient Egyptian literature.
Learning Egyptian presents a number of problems not encountered in studying most other
languages. The culture of ancient Egypt differs from our own in more than just its language. Its
texts are full of terms and concepts that have no direct counterpart in the modern world. To help
you understand these, each grammatical lesson is also complemented by a short essay on some
aspect of Egyptian society and thought. This foundation will make it possible for you not only to
translate the hieroglyphic texts but also to understand what they have to say.
Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, and our knowledge of it is restricted to the limited number
of texts that have managed to survive. We learn Egyptian, therefore, not as a means of communication but as a tool for reading those texts. The purpose of this book is to enable you to understand
the grammar and content of Middle Egyptian texts and not—or only accidentally—to teach you
ix
how to write your own Egyptian sentences. The exercises in each lesson and the accompanying
dictionary in the back of the book therefore go in one direction only, from Egyptian to English.
As you will discover in the course of the first few lessons, the hieroglyphic writing system does
not represent very well what Middle Egyptian was like as a spoken language. For this reason, we
cannot usefully approach ancient Egyptian as we might other languages, learning the grammar
through phrases and sentences designed around the scenarios of everyday life. Because hieroglyphs
usually do not reveal the actual form of a word, we cannot rely just on the written form to tell us
what a word means. We also have to pay close attention to syntax: how words are put together into
the phrases and sentences of Egyptian texts.
In learning Middle Egyptian, therefore, we also need to learn the mechanics of syntax—
concepts such as predicates, adverbial modifiers, and subordinate clauses. Experience has shown
that beginning students often find these concepts a major hurdle to learning Egyptian—and conversely, once they are understood, a significant aid to reading Egyptian texts. For that reason, the
lessons in this book devote a good deal of time to the discussion of syntax. Grammatical terms are
defined when they are first introduced, and syntactic constructions are illustrated with examples
from English as well as Egyptian. This approach should make it possible for you to perceive syntax
as less of a barrier and more of a tool in your efforts to learn Middle Egyptian.
Studies of Egyptian syntax have been dominated historically by two major schools of grammatical theory. The present book subscribes to neither of these exclusively. The emphasis in these
lessons is on a practical approach to recognizing Egyptian forms and constructions, using terms
and analyses from both schools of thought together with more recent advances in our understanding of how the language works. Discussions of grammatical theory are relegated to the final lesson,
where you can evaluate their usefulness on the basis of what you have learned.
This book is the result of more than two decades of thinking about the most effective way to
present Egyptian grammar to beginning students, coupled with practical application in the
classroom. I am grateful to the faithful corps of students who have patiently endured six years of
instruction and reading Middle Egyptian texts with me in the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Beatrice Cooper (who laboriously proofread the lessons and checked every cross-reference in
them, thereby saving me from innumerable errors), Charles Herzer, Anne and David Mininberg,
Howard Schlossman, and Elinor Smith. Their dedicated efforts have shown me the benefits of
some approaches as well as the impracticality of others, and this book in its present form is in large
part a tribute to their continued interest and comments.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to those who have supported and encouraged my interest in
Egyptian grammar, in particular Dr. Dorothea Arnold, Lila Acheson Wallace Curator and Chair of
the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art, and Prof. William Kelly Simpson, of Yale
University. Above all, I am grateful to the unwavering commitment and support of my wife, Susan
J. Allen. Without her, this book could not have been written.
x
Preface to the Second Edition
The reception accorded the first edition of this book, published in 2000, has far exceeded expectations, both in the world of Egyptology and among the general public. The extent to which
the book has been adopted for classroom use and self-instruction, however, has also revealed a
number of shortcomings that this new edition is meant to address. Chief among these are errata,
now hopefully all corrected. The essays have been updated and enhanced with illustrations and the
addendum on month names in Lesson 9 has been expanded and incorporated into the lesson itself.
References no longer occupy a separate section at the back and now accompany the examples
cited in the text itself; as in the first edition, they use standard abbreviations and are meant primarily as aids to Egyptologists. Because the purpose of the examples is to illustrate grammatical
points, I have sometimes emended hieroglyphic spellings and restored missing text for the sake of
clarity; the professional user is therefore cautioned to consult the referenced publication rather
than citing directly from the hieroglyphic text as presented here.
I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for the opportunity to make these changes, and I
hope that they will make the book even more useful than its first incarnation.
xi
1. Egyptian Language and Writing
LANGUAGE
1.1
Family
Egyptian is the ancient and original language of Egypt. It belongs to the language family known as
Afroasiatic or Hamito-Semitic, and is related to both of that family’s branches: North African (or
Hamitic) languages such as Berber and Hausa; and Asiatic (or Semitic) languages such as Arabic,
Ethiopic, and Hebrew. Within Afroasiatic, Egyptian is unique, with no close relative of its own. It
has features that are common to both branches; where it differs, it is often closer to the African
side of the family.
1.2
History
Egyptian first appeared in writing shortly before 3200 BC and remained in active use until the
eleventh century AD. This lifespan of more than four thousand years makes it the longest continually
attested language in the world. Beginning with the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, Arabic
gradually replaced Egyptian as the dominant language in Egypt. Today, the language of Egypt is
Arabic. Egyptian is a dead language, like Latin, which can only be studied in writing, though it is
still spoken in the rituals of the Coptic (Egyptian Christian) Church.
Throughout its long lifetime, Egyptian underwent tremendous changes. Scholars classify its
history into five major phases:
1) Old Egyptian is the name given to the oldest known phase of the language. Although
Egyptian writing is first attested before 3000 BC, these early inscriptions consist only of
names and labels. Old Egyptian proper is dated from approximately 2600 BC, when the
first connected texts appeared, until about 2100 BC.
2) Middle Egyptian, sometimes called Classical Egyptian, is closely related to Old Egyptian. It appeared around 2100 BC and survived as a spoken language for some five hundred
years, but it remained the standard hieroglyphic language for the rest of ancient Egyptian history. Middle Egyptian is the phase of the language discussed in this book.
3) Late Egyptian began to replace Middle Egyptian as the spoken language after 1600
BC, and it remained in use until about 600 BC. Though descended from Old and Middle
Egyptian, Late Egyptian differed substantially from the earlier phases, particularly in
grammar. Traces of Late Egyptian can be found in texts earlier than 1600 BC, but it did
not appear as a full written language until after 1300 BC.
4) Demotic developed out of Late Egyptian. It first appeared around 650
vived until the fifth century AD.
BC
and sur-
5) Coptic is the name given to the final phase of Egyptian, which is closely related to
Demotic. It appeared at the end of the first century AD and was spoken for nearly a
thousand years thereafter. The last known texts written by native speakers of Coptic
date to the eleventh century AD.
1
2
1.3
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Dialects
Besides these chronological changes, Egyptian also had several dialects. These regional differences
in speech and writing are best attested in Coptic, which had five major dialects. They cannot be
detected in the writing of earlier phases of Egyptian, but they undoubtedly existed then as well: a
letter from about 1200 BC complains that a correspondent’s language is as incomprehensible as that
of a northern Egyptian speaking with an Egyptian from the south. The southern dialect, known as
Saidic, was the classical form of Coptic; the northern one, called Bohairic, is the dialect used in
Coptic Church services today.
WRITING
1.4
Hieroglyphs
The basic writing system of ancient Egyptian consisted of about five hundred common signs,
known as hieroglyphs. The term “hieroglyph” comes from two Greek words meaning “sacred
carvings,” which are a translation, in turn, of the Egyptians’ own name for their writing system,
“the god’s speech.” Each sign in this system is a hieroglyph, and the system as a whole is called
hieroglyphic (not “hieroglyphics”).
Unlike Mesopotamian cuneiform or Chinese, whose beginnings can be traced over several
hundred years, hieroglyphic writing seems to appear in Egypt suddenly, shortly before 3200 BC, as
a complete system. Scholars are divided in their opinions about its origins. Some suggest that the
earlier, developmental stages of hieroglyphic were written on perishable materials, such as wood,
and simply have not survived. Others argue that the system could have been invented all at once
by an unknown genius. Although it was once thought that the idea of writing came to Egypt from
Mesopotamia, recent discoveries indicate that writing arose first in Egypt.
People since the ancient Greeks have tried to understand this system as a mystical encoding of
secret wisdom, but hieroglyphic is no more mysterious than any other system that has been used to
record language. Basically, hieroglyphic is nothing more than the way the ancient Egyptians wrote their language. To read hieroglyphic, therefore, you have to learn the Egyptian language.
1.5
Hieroglyphic spelling
Each hieroglyph is a picture of a thing that existed in the world or imagination of the ancient
Egyptians: for instance, the ground plan of a simple house ( ), a human mouth ( ), or a pair of
legs in motion ( ). These could be used to write the words that they depicted, or related words:
for example, “house”; “come.” When a hieroglyph is used in this manner, it is called an ideogram (“idea writing”). We still use ideograms, even in English: “I ♥ my dog.”
Ideographic writing is simple and direct, but it is pretty much limited to things that can be
pictured. All languages, however, also contain many words for things that cannot be conveyed by a
simple picture. Successful writing systems must find a way to express those ideas as well. Most
written languages do so by a system of signs that represent not things but the sounds of the language. This allows their writers to “spell out” words. A sign used in this way is called a
phonogram (“sound writing”). English writing uses phonograms almost exclusively: each letter
in our alphabet is a symbol that represents a sound rather than an object of the real world.
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
3
The idea that symbols could be used to represent the sounds of a language rather than objects
is one of the most important, and ancient, of all human discoveries. It is often called “the rebus
principle.” A rebus is a message spelled out in pictures that represent sounds rather than the things
they are pictures of: for example, the pictures of an eye ( ), a bee ( ), and a leaf ( ) can be put
together as the English rebus
, meaning “I believe” (“eye-bee-leaf ”)—which has nothing to
do with eyes, bees, or leaves. The hieroglyphic system used this principle too. Many Egyptian hieroglyphs could be used not only as ideograms, but also as phonograms. For example, the signs for
“house” ( ) and “mouth” ( ) were also used as phonograms in the word
“ascend,” which
has nothing to do with houses or mouths.
In Middle Egyptian, words spelled with phonograms usually have an ideogram added at the
end. This extra sign, called a determinative, has two functions: it shows that the signs preceding it
are to be read as phonograms rather than ideograms, and it indicates the general idea of the word.
: the “walking legs” sign indicates that
Thus, the word meaning “ascend” is usually written
this is a word having to do with motion.
To summarize: the individual pictures of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system are used in
three different ways:
1) as ideograms, to represent the things they actually depict: for example,
“mouth.”
“house” and
2) as phonograms, to represent the sounds that “spell out” individual words: for example,
“ascend.” Used in this way, the hieroglyphs stand for sounds rather than for pictures
of things.
3) as determinatives, to show that the signs preceding are meant as phonograms, and to
indicate the general idea of the word: for example, the “walking legs” in
“ascend.”
All hieroglyphs have the potential to be used in each of these ways. In practice, however, their use
was generally more restricted. Some occur mostly as ideograms or determinatives, others almost
exclusively as phonograms. The “house” sign ( ) is one of the few hieroglyphs that was regularly
used in all three functions: as an ideogram, meaning “house”; as a phonogram, with the value pr;
and as a determinative, after words denoting buildings.
1.6
Direction
Unlike English, which is always written from left to right, and normally in horizontal rows, hieroglyphs could be written in four different directions:
in a horizontal row, left to right (
in a vertical column, left to right (
) or right to left (
) or right to left (
)
).
This flexibility is a useful feature of hieroglyphic writing. The Egyptians often took advantage of it
to produce symmetrical inscriptions. For example, on the offering-table pictured below (Licht, 54 fig.
53), one inscription begins at the top and runs down the right side (A), and a similar one faces it on
the left (B); at the bottom, two shorter inscriptions (C and D) face each other the same way:
4
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
When hieroglyphs accompany pictures of human beings or the gods, they normally face in the
same direction as the individual they refer to. In the scene reproduced below (Meir V, pl. 18), the man
on the left, facing right, is a sculptor; on the right, facing left, is the seated statue he is working on.
Above the sculptor’s head are two rows of hieroglyphs, also facing right, which identify him as
“Overseer of sculpting, Itjau”; the three rows of hieroglyphs above the statue read “Statue of the
courtier, overseer of priests, Henenit the Black,” and they face left, like the statue itself.
Usually, signs with an obvious front and back (like ) face the beginning of their inscription, as
they do in the illustrations above. The normal rule is to read “into” the signs: the lefthand inscriptions in these figures are read from right to left, and the righthand ones from left to right. Once in
a while, however, this rule is reversed, and the signs face the end of the inscription; such inscriptions are called “retrograde,” and are found almost exclusively in religious texts.
1.
1.7
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
5
Groups
The words of hieroglyphic texts follow one after the other: in the scene reproduced above, for
example, the three rows on the right contain, in order, the words “Statue of ” (row 1), “courtier,
overseer (of ) priests” (row 2), and “Henenit (the) Black” (row 3) (the words in parentheses do not
appear in the hieroglyphs). The signs that spell out these words, however, are arranged in groups,
rather than one after the other like the letters of an English word.
This kind of organization is a fundamental principle of all hieroglyphic writing. The arrangement of the groups depends on the shape of the individual signs. In general, every hieroglyph has
one of three basic shapes:
1) tall signs: for example, and .
2) flat signs: for example,
and
.
3) small signs: for example, and .
Tall signs tend to stand by themselves, but the other signs are usually arranged into square or rectangular groups. In the name “Henenit the Black,” for instance, the first two tall signs stand alone,
one after the other ( ); the next two, which are flat, are arranged in a square ( ); the tall sign
following stands alone ( ); and the last two small signs are grouped in a rectangle with one above
the other ( ). Sometimes a tall sign can be made smaller and grouped with a flat one, as in
“overseer” in the scene above. When signs of dissimilar shapes are grouped, they are usually cenin the same scene. If a flat or small sign has to stand alone it is
tered, like the hieroglyphs
and in the lefthand inscription of the scene.
centered in the row, like
The groups of a hieroglyphic inscription are meant to be read from beginning to end and
from top to bottom. In the word
“courtier,” for example, the order is – –
– – . Direction and grouping are the only organizing methods used in hieroglyphic writing. Hieroglyphic
texts do not separate the words by spaces, and there are no punctuation marks. This makes hieroglyphic inscriptions difficult to read at first, but with practice it becomes easier to see words rather
than strings of signs, justasyoucanreadthisstringoflettersbecauseyouknowenglish.
1.8
The uses of hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphic was used to write Old and Middle Egyptian. Although Middle Egyptian ceased to be
a spoken language by about 1600 BC, hieroglyphic texts continued to use it until the end of ancient Egyptian history. Most hieroglyphic inscriptions are found on the walls of ancient Egyptian
temples and tombs, or on objects such as statues, offering tables, coffins, sarcophagi (stone coffins),
and stelae (large slabs of stone or wood). In these places the texts can serve as labels (as in the scene
above) or dedications (as on the offering-table above); they can also record the speech of the participants in a scene. Longer hieroglyphic inscriptions are usually historical or autobiographical
texts, or religious texts such as hymns and funerary spells.
Hieroglyphs were normally carved into stone, wood, or ivory, or painted on plaster. Because all
hieroglyphic signs are individual pictures, the ancient sculptors and painters took as much care in
making them as they did with the other elements of a scene, such as the figures of animals, people,
or gods. Sometimes, however, the artists carved or painted only the outline of each sign; this is particularly true in long hieroglyphic texts.
6
1.9
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Cursive hieroglyphs and hieratic
Besides carving or painting inscriptions, the ancient Egyptians also wrote texts with a reed brush
and ink on papyrus, leather, or wood. In these handwritten texts it is very rare to find hieroglyphs
made with the same detail as those in hieroglyphic inscriptions. Such documents employed a
much simpler form of each sign, called cursive hieroglyphic. Here is a sample of cursive writing,
with the same text reproduced in regular hieroglyphs next to it (CT IV 255b–257a T1Be):
Cursive hieroglyphic inscriptions are usually written from right to left in columns, like the sample
above, and are found almost exclusively in religious texts such as the “Book of the Dead.”
For most handwritten texts, the Egyptians used an even more cursive style of writing, which
the ancient Greeks called hieratic (“priestly”). Hieratic is almost as old as hieroglyphic itself. The
relationship between hieratic and hieroglyphic is the same as that between our handwriting and
printing. Like cursive hieroglyphs, each hieratic sign has a hieroglyphic counterpart, although these
are not always as self-evident in hieratic as they are in cursive hieroglyphs. Here is a sample hieratic
text, with the corresponding hieroglyphs transcribed below it (Ptahhotep 277–78):
Like cursive hieroglyphs, hieratic was written with a reed brush and ink, usually on papyrus. It
is always written from right to left. Originally, hieratic could be written in either rows or columns;
after about 1800 BC, however, columns were used only in religious texts, and all other hieratic
texts were written in rows. Hieratic occasionally has a kind of punctuation: some copies of literary
texts use a small dot to separate units of thought, such as the lines of a poem.
Hieratic was used to write Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian. For Old and Middle Egyptian it
served as an alternative means of writing alongside hieroglyphic. The two scripts were used for different kinds of documents: hieroglyphic for formal texts meant to be permanent, such as tomb and
temple inscriptions, and hieratic usually for more temporary texts, such as letters and accounts.
Hieratic texts often reflect the contemporary colloquial language more closely than hieroglyphic,
particularly after about 1600 BC; Late Egyptian is written almost exclusively in hieratic.
1.
1.10
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
7
Demotic
Late Egyptian hieratic writing became more cursive and abbreviated as time went on, particularly
in administrative documents. Eventually, it developed into the script we call Demotic (from the
Greek for “popular”). Here is an example of Demotic writing (Erichsen, Lesestücke I, 73):
The term “Demotic” is used to refer to both writing and language: the phase of Egyptian known
as Demotic is written only in the Demotic script. Since Demotic developed out of hieratic, it is
even farther removed from hieroglyphic, and it is almost impossible to recognize the hieroglyphic
ancestors of Demotic signs. For this reason, scholars do not usually transcribe Demotic writing
into hieroglyphs; instead, they transliterate it into English letters (see Lesson 2): the transliteration
of the text above reads ÿd.f n.w m-jr ãsf tæ ntj jw.j ÿd.s ÿd.w pæy.n nb ëæ.
The first Demotic texts appeared around 650 BC. From then on, Demotic was the normal
means of writing Egyptian; hieratic, like cursive hieroglyphic, was kept only for religious manuscripts (hence its name “priestly”); and hieroglyphic was used in monumental inscriptions. Like
hieratic, Demotic was mostly written with a brush and ink on papyrus. Toward the end of Egyptian civilization, however, only priests were still able to read hieroglyphic writing; inscriptions that
were meant to have a larger audience were carved in Demotic instead. The Rosetta Stone, which
records a decree issued in 196 BC to honor the pharaoh Ptolemy V, is inscribed in hieroglyphic (the
sacred script of the priesthood that issued the decree), Demotic (the normal Egyptian script), and
Greek (the native language of the Ptolemaic pharaohs).
1.11
Coptic
The Egyptians who adopted Christianity, after the first century AD, began to translate the sacred
scriptures of this new religion into their own language, but they were reluctant to use the Demotic
script for this purpose because of its association with the older, “pagan” religion. Instead, they
wrote their sacred texts in the letters of the Greek alphabet. This script is called Coptic, the same
term used for the Egyptian branch of Christianity. The Coptic alphabet has thirty-two letters:
twenty-four taken from Greek, seven for sounds that Egyptian had but Greek did not, and one
monogram (one letter standing for two). Here is a sample of Coptic writing (with the words separated), and its equivalent in English letters:
peneiwt ethnmpEue marepekran ouop
peneio-t
eth’n’mpe-ue
marepekran
ouop
These are the first words of the Christian “Lord’s Prayer” (“Our-father, who-(is)-in-the-skies, mayyour-name-be holy”). For more on the Coptic alphabet, see § 2.5.
Like “Demotic,” the term “Coptic” refers to a phase of the Egyptian language as well as a system of writing. As Egypt became increasingly Christian, the older writing systems were relegated
to the texts and temples of the old religion. By the end of the fifth century AD, Coptic had become
the only means of writing Egyptian, for secular and religious (Christian) texts alike. It remained in
use until the death of the language itself, some six centuries later.
8
1.12
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Decipherment
After the introduction of Coptic, the four ancient Egyptian scripts—hieroglyphic, hieratic, Demotic,
and Coptic—existed side by side for about two hundred years. Hieratic died out sometime in the
third century AD, the last hieroglyphic inscription was carved in AD 394, and the last known text in
Demotic dates to AD 452. Thereafter, even though Egyptian continued to be spoken and written
(in Coptic), the knowledge of the earlier writing systems was lost.
The earliest attempt to recover this lost knowledge probably dates from the fourth century AD,
slightly before the last known ancient texts were inscribed. This was a work called Hieroglyphica
(“Hieroglyphics”), supposedly written by an Egyptian named Horapollo and translated into Greek
(the earliest copy of it dates to the fifteenth century AD). There is reason to believe that the author
had some knowledge of hieroglyphic, but his explanation of the system is purely allegorical—
perhaps because it was intended for a Greek audience, who had long believed in the mystical symbolism of hieroglyphs. He explains, for example, that the word for “son” is written with a goose
because geese love their offspring more than any other animal does. The picture of a goose ( ) is
in fact used to write the word “son,” but only as a phonogram (because one word for “goose” had
the same sound as the word for “son”); it is also used as a phonogram in other words that have
nothing to do with either geese or offspring.
Horapollo’s allegorical explanations were highly influential, and his approach dominated attempts
at decipherment for the next fourteen centuries. Only with the work of Athanasius Kircher, in the
mid-seventeenth century, did scholars begin to think that hieroglyphs could represent sounds as
well as ideas. Kircher knew Coptic, and he also had the inspired notion that this last phase of
Egyptian might be somehow related to the language of the hieroglyphs. But Kircher also believed
in the mystical nature of the ancient script, and this eventually doomed to failure all his attempts at
decipherment.
It was not until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, in 1799, that scholars were able to make
practical use of Kircher’s ideas. For the first time they were presented with a hieroglyphic text (on
the top third of the stone) that had an undisputed translation into a known language (Greek, on
the stone’s bottom third). Scholars in several countries worked on the new text and succeeded in
identifying many of the hieroglyphic groups with words in the Greek translation. But the final
breakthrough eluded all of them except one, a young French schoolteacher named Jean-François
Champollion.
From the work of two of his contemporaries, the Swede Johan Åkerblad and the Englishman
Thomas Young, Champollion suspected that some hieroglyphic signs might be read phonetically.
He began compiling a list of such signs by studying royal names, which could easily be identified
by the “cartouche” (name-ring) surrounding them. The cartouches on the Rosetta Stone all corresponded to the name of the pharaoh Ptolemy V (210–180 BC) in the Greek text:
= PTOLEMAIOS (Ptolemaios).
Using this as a starting point, Champollion next looked at the cartouches on an obelisk whose
base had been inscribed with Greek texts honoring another Ptolemy and two queens named
Cleopatra. Here he found the same cartouche along with another, which he identified as the name
“Cleopatra”:
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
9
= KLEOPATRA (Kleopatra).
Both cartouches had some of the same signs, and by their position in the two names he was able
to identify them as p ( ), t ( ), o ( ), and l ( ). With these he was able to assign values to most
of the other signs as well: m ( ), i ( ), s ( ), e ( ), a ( ), t ( ), and r ( ).
This convinced Champollion that hieroglyphs could be used alphabetically, at least for foreign
names, though he still believed that they could also be read symbolically. The next step, and the real
. From his prebreakthrough, came when he began working on a cartouche with the signs
vious work, Champollion was able to recognize the last two signs as s. Seeking a value for the first
symbol, he thought of the sun and the Coptic word for “sun,” re-. This gave him re-–…–s–s and immediately reminded him of the name Ramesses, which was known from a list of pharaonic names
in a
in a Greek history of Egypt written around 300 BC. Champollion then noticed the sign
hieroglyphic group on the Rosetta Stone corresponding to the word for “birth” in the Greek text.
Since the Coptic word for “birth” is mise, this confirmed his reading of the name Ramesses (re-–
mes–s–s, meaning “The sun is the one who gave him birth”).
Champollion’s discovery proved three things about hieroglyphs: they could be used both as
phonograms ( = s) and as ideograms ( = re- “sun”), and the language of hieroglyphic inscriptions was the same as that of Coptic ( = re- “sun,”
= mise “birth”). With this foundation he
was able to make rapid progress in reading not only the Rosetta Stone but other hieroglyphic texts
as well. The announcement of his discovery, on September 29th, 1822, marks the beginning of the
modern science of Egyptology.
Since Champollion’s time, Egyptologists have continually refined our knowledge of ancient
Egyptian writing, words, and grammar. Except for the most obscure words, hieroglyphic texts can
be read today almost as easily as those of any other known language.
ESSAY 1. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HISTORY
Scholars divide the long history of ancient Egypt into periods and dynasties. A dynasty is a series
of kings related by family, geographic origin, or some other feature. Our current system of dynasties dates to the work of an Egyptian priest named Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt about
300 BC. Using older Egyptian archives as his source, Manetho divided Egypt’s pharaohs into thirty
dynasties. These divisions are still used for the most part, though scholars have been able to revise
them on the basis of more ancient historical material.
The dynastic history of Egypt begins around 3000 BC, when the country was unified under a
single government. Before that time, Egypt was divided into a number of local centers of power;
this is known as the Predynastic Period. Manetho began his Dynasty 1 with the legendary king
Menes, who united the south and north and built a new capital at Memphis ( just south of modern
Cairo). Scholars have not been able to identify Menes with any of the known historical pharaohs.
Today, the first king of Dynasty 1 is generally assumed to be either Aha or his predecessor, Narmer.
In fact, there is evidence that a number of kings even before Narmer had control of most if not all
of Egypt; to preserve the traditional dynastic numbering, scholars group these earlier pharaohs into
a “Dynasty Zero.”
10
1.
EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND WRITING
Dynasties 1 and 2 are known as the Archaic Period (ca. 3000–2650 BC). During this time we
can trace the development of most traditional aspects of Egyptian civilization: government, religion, art, and writing. The first full bloom of Egyptian culture came during the Old Kingdom,
Dynasties 3–6 (ca. 2650–2150 BC). This was the time when the great pyramids were built and the
first full hieroglyphic texts appeared.
After Dynasty 6, the central government weakened and Egypt entered a phase of its history
known as the First Intermediate Period (Dynasties 8–11, ca. 2150–2040 BC; Manetho’s Dynasty 7
does not correspond to any known historical kings). Toward the end of this period, Egypt was
ruled by two competing local dynasties: Dynasty 10, with its capital at Herakleopolis in the north;
and Dynasty 11, based at Thebes in the south.
Around 2040 BC, a king of Dynasty 11, known as Mentuhotep II, managed to gain control of
the entire country; this event marks the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11-13, ca.
2040–1700 BC). Dynasty 12, ruling from a new capital at Lisht (about thirty miles south of modern
Cairo), inaugurated the second flowering of Egyptian culture. During its rule the first great works
of Egyptian literature were written, in the phase of the language known as Middle Egyptian.
Toward the end of Dynasty 13, central authority over the entire country weakened once again,
and Egypt entered its Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 13–17, ca. 1700–1550 BC). This era
began with competing native dynasties in the south and north (Dynasties 13–14). Around 1650 BC
the rulers of an Asiatic settlement in the Delta gained control of most of the country. The
Egyptians called these kings Hyksos, meaning “foreign rulers”; they are traditionally assigned to
Dynasty 15. Meanwhile, the area around Thebes, in the south of Egypt, was governed by two
successive native dynasties (the 16th and 17th).
After a series of battles lasting some two decades, the last kings of Dynasty 17 were able to
conquer the Hyksos and reestablish a unified government. Their success marks the beginning of
Dynasty 18 and the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom (Dynasty 18, ca.
1550–1295 BC). Once again Egyptian culture flourished, as the pharaohs of Dynasty 18 extended
Egyptian influence over much of the Near East and inaugurated great building projects in Egypt
itself. The end of Dynasty 18 saw the rule of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten (who tried to establish the worship of a single god) and his successors, including Tutankhamun—a series of reigns
known as the Amarna Period (ca. 1350–1323 BC).
The last pharaoh of Dynasty 18, Haremhab (ca. 1323–1295 BC), managed to quell the internal
disruption that resulted from Akhenaten’s experiment, and his successors once again presided over
a strong and stable Egypt. Most of the kings of the next two dynasties were named Ramesses, and
their rule is known as the Ramesside Period (Dynasties 19–20, ca. 1295–1070 BC). The reign of
Ramesses II (ca. 1279–1213 BC) was the high point of this time, marked by a peace treaty with the
Hittites (the second great power in the Near East), impressive advances in Egyptian theology and
philosophy, and the greatest building projects since the time of the pyramids, 1300 years earlier.
Though most of them bore the same name, the successors of Ramesses II were hard pressed to
live up to his legacy. After the death of the last Ramesside pharaoh, Ramesses XI, Egypt once more
fell into a time of disunity. For the next four hundred years, a time known as the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070–650 BC), the country was torn between competing dynasties of native rulers