Part 24

The _Neuägyptische Grammatik_ (1880) dealt with texts written in the vulgar dialect of the New Kingdom (Dyns. XVIII. to XX.). Next followed, in the _Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde_, studies on the Old Kingdom inscription of Una, and the Middle Kingdom contracts of Assiut, as well as on an "Old Coptic" text of the 3rd century A.D. At this point a papyrus of stories written in the popular language of the Middle Kingdom provided Erman with a stepping-stone from Old Egyptian to the Late Egyptian of the _Neuägyptische Grammatik_, and gave the connexions that would bind solidly together the whole structure of Egyptian grammar (see _Sprache des Papyrus Westcar_, 1889). The very archaic pyramid texts enabled him to sketch the grammar of the earliest known form of Egyptian (_Zeitschrift d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellschaft_, 1892), and in 1894 he was able to write a little manual of Egyptian for beginners (_Ägyptische Grammatik_, 2nd ed., 1902), centring on the language of the standard inscriptions of the Middle and New Kingdoms, but accompanying the main sketch with references to earlier and later forms. Of the work of Erman's pupils we may mention G. Steindorff's little _Koptische Grammatik_ (1894, ed. 1904), improving greatly on Stern's standard work in regard to phonology and the relationship of Coptic forms to Egyptian, and K. Sethe's _Das Ägyptische Verbum_ (1899). The latter is an extensive monograph on the verb in Egyptian and Coptic by a brilliant and laborious philologist. Owing to the very imperfect notation of sound in the writing, the highly important subject of the verbal roots and verbal forms was perhaps the obscurest branch of Egyptian grammar when Sethe first attacked it in 1895. The subject has been reviewed by Erman, _Die Flexion des ägyptischen Verbums_ in the _Sitzungsberichte_ of the Berlin Academy, 1900. The Berlin school, having settled the main lines of the grammar, next turned its attention to lexicography. It has devised a scheme, founded on that for the Latin Thesaurus of the Berlin Academy, which almost mechanically sorts the whole number of occurrences of every word in any text examined. Scholars in England, America and Denmark, as well as in Germany, have taken part in this great enterprise, and though the completion of it may be far off, the collections of classified material already made are very valuable for consultation.[11] At present Egyptologists depend on Heinrich Brugsch's admirable but somewhat antiquated _Wörterbuch_ and on Levi's useful but entirely uncritical _Vocabolario_. Though demotic has not yet received serious attention at Berlin, the influence of that great school has made itself felt amongst demotists, especially in Switzerland, Germany, America and England. The death of Heinrich Brugsch in 1895 was a very severe blow to demotic studies; but it must be admitted that his brilliant gifts lay in other directions than exact grammatical analysis. Apart from their philological interest, as giving the history of a remarkable language during a period of several thousand years, the grammatical studies of the last quarter of the 19th century and afterwards are beginning to bear fruit in regard to the exact interpretation of historical documents on Egyptian monuments and papyri. Not long ago the supposed meaning of these was extracted chiefly by brilliant guessing, and the published translations of even the best scholars could carry no guarantee of more than approximate exactitude, where the sense depended at all on correct recognition of the syntax. Now the translator proceeds in Egyptian with some of the sureness with which he would deal with Latin or Greek. The meaning of many words may be still unknown, and many constructions are still obscure; but at least he can distinguish fairly between a correct text and a corrupt text. Egyptian writing lent itself only too easily to misunderstanding, and the writings of one period were but half intelligible to the learned scribes of another. The mistaken readings of the old inscriptions by the priests at Abydos (Table of Abydos), when attempting to record the names of the kings of the 1st Dynasty on the walls of the temple of Seti I., are now admitted on all sides; and no palaeographer, whether his field be Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian or any other class of MSS., will be surprised to hear that the Egyptian papyri and inscriptions abound in corruptions and mistakes. The translator of to-day can, if he wishes, mark where certainty ends and mere conjecture begins, and it is to be hoped that advantage will be taken more widely of this new power. The Egyptologist who has long lived in the realm of conjecture is too prone to consider any series of guesses good enough to serve as a translation, and forgets to insert the notes of interrogation which would warn workers in other fields from implicit trust.

_Language and Writing._--The history of the Egyptian language is evidenced by documents extending over a very long range of time. They begin with the primitive inscriptions of the Ist Dynasty (not later than 3300 B.C.) and end with the latest Coptic compositions of about the 14th century A.D. The bulk of the hieroglyphic inscriptions are written in a more or less artificial literary language; but in business documents, letters, popular tales, &c., the scribes often adhered closely to the living form of the tongue, and thus reveal its progressive changes.

The stages of the language are now distinguished as follows:--

_Old Egyptian._--This is properly the language of the Old Kingdom. In it we have (a) the recently discovered inscriptions of the Ist Dynasty, too brief and concise to throw much light on the language of that time; and the great collections of spells and ritual texts found inscribed in the Pyramids of the Vth and VIth Dynasties, which must even then have been of high antiquity, though they contain later additions made in the same style. (b) A few historical texts and an abundance of short inscriptions representing the language of the IVth, Vth and VIth Dynasties. The ordinary _literary language_ of the later monuments is modelled on Old Egyptian. It is often much affected by contemporary speech, but preserves in the main the characteristics of the language of the Old Kingdom.

_Middle and Late Egyptian._--These represent the vulgar speech of the Middle and New Kingdoms respectively. The former is found chiefly in tales, letters, &c., written in hieratic on papyri of the XIIIth Dynasty to the end of the Middle Kingdom; also in some inscriptions of the XVIIIth Dynasty. Late Egyptian is seen in hieratic papyri of the XVIIIth to the XXIst Dynasties. The spelling of Late Egyptian is very extraordinary, full of false etymologies, otiose signs, &c., the old orthography being quite unable to adapt itself neatly to the profoundly modified language; nevertheless, this clumsy spelling is expressive, and the very mistakes are instructive as to the pronunciation.

_Demotic._--Demotic Egyptian seems to represent approximately the vulgar speech of the Saite period, and is written in the "demotic" character, which may be traced back to the XXVIth Dynasty, if not to a still earlier time. With progressive changes, this form of the language is found in documents reaching down to the fall of Paganism in the 4th century A.D.[12] Under the later Ptolemies and the Roman rule documents in Greek are more abundant than in demotic, and the language of the ruling classes must have begun to penetrate the masses deeply.

_Coptic._--This, in the main, represents the popular language of early Christian Egypt from the 3rd to perhaps the 10th century A.D., when the growth of Coptic as a literary language must have ceased. The Greek alphabet, reinforced by a few signs borrowed from demotic, rendered the spoken tongue so accurately that four distinct, though closely allied, dialects are readily distinguishable in Coptic MSS.; ample remains are found of renderings of the Scriptures into all these dialects. The distinctions between the dialects consist largely in pronunciation, but extend also to the vocabulary, word-formation and syntax. Such interchanges are found as _l_ for _r_, [Coptic: qima] (_k_, _ch_) for [Coptic: dandia] (_dj_), final _i_ for final _e_, _a_ for _e_, _a_ for _o_. Early in the 2nd century A.D., pagan Egyptians, or perhaps foreigners settled in Egypt, essayed, as yet unskilfully, to write the native language in Greek letters. This _Old Coptic_, as it is termed, was still almost entirely free from Greek loan-words, and its strong archaisms are doubtless accounted for by the literary language, even in its most "vulgar" forms, having moved more slowly than the speech of the people. Christian Coptic, though probably at first contemporary with some documents of Old Coptic, contrasts strongly with the latter. The monks whose task it was to perfect the adaptation of the alphabet to the dialects of Egypt and translate the Scriptures out of the Greek, flung away all pagan traditions. It is clear that the basis which they chose for the new literature was the simplest language of daily life in the monasteries, charged as it was with expressions taken from Greek, pre-eminently the language of patristic Christianity. There is evidence that the amount of stress on syllables, and the consequent length of vowels, varied greatly in spoken Coptic, and that the variation gave much trouble to the scribes; the early Christian writers must have taken as a model for each dialect the deliberate speech of grave elders or preachers, and so secured a uniform system of accentuation. The remains of Old Coptic, though very instructive in their marked peculiarities, are as yet too few for definite classification. The main divisions of Christian Coptic as recognized and named at present are: Sahidic (formerly called Theban), spoken in the upper Thebais; Akhmimic, in the neighbourhood of Akhmim, but driven out by Sahidic about the 5th century; Fayumic, in the Fayum (formerly named wrongly "Bashmuric," from a province of the Delta); Bohairic, the dialect of the "coast district" (formerly named "Memphite"), spoken in the north-western Delta. Coptic, much alloyed with Arabic, was spoken in Upper Egypt as late as the 15th century, but it has long been a dead language.[13] Sahidic and Bohairic are the most important dialects, each of these having left abundant remains; the former spread over the whole of Upper Egypt, and the latter since the 14th century has been the language of the sacred books of Christianity throughout the country, owing to the hierarchical importance of Alexandria and the influence of the ancient monasteries established in the north-western desert.

The above stages of the Egyptian language are not defined with absolute clearness. Progress is seen from dynasty to dynasty or from century to century. New Egyptian shades off almost imperceptibly into demotic, and it may be hoped that gaps which now exist in the development will be filled by further discovery.

Coptic is the only stage of the language in which the spelling gives a clear idea of the pronunciation. It is therefore the mainstay of the scholar in investigating or restoring the word-forms of the ancient language. Greek transcriptions of Egyptian names and words are valuable as evidence for the vocalization of Egyptian. Such are found from the 6th century B.C. in the inscription of Abu Simbel, from the 5th in Herodotus, &c., and abound in Ptolemaic and later documents from the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. onwards. At first sight they may seem inaccurate, but on closer examination the Graecizing is seen to follow definite rules, especially in the Ptolemaic period. A few cuneiform transcriptions, reaching as far back as the XVIIIth Dynasty, give valuable hints as to how Egyptian was pronounced in the 15th century B.C. Coptic itself is of course quite inadequate to enable us to restore Old Egyptian. In it the Old Egyptian verbal forms are mostly replaced by periphrases; though the strong roots are often preserved entire, the weaker consonants and the [Hebrew: ts] have largely or entirely disappeared, so that the language appears as one of biliteral rather than triliteral roots. Coptic is strongly impregnated with Greek words adopted late; moreover, a certain number of Semitic loan-words flowed into Egyptian at all ages, and especially from the 16th century B.C. onwards, displacing earlier words. It is only by the most careful scrutiny, or the exercise of the most piercing insight, that the imperfectly spelled Egyptian has been made to yield up one grammatical secret after another in the light brought to bear upon it from Coptic. Demotic grammar ought soon to be thoroughly comprehensible in its forms, and the study of Late Egyptian should not stand far behind that of demotic. On the other hand, Middle Egyptian, and still more Old Egyptian, which is separated from Middle Egyptian by a wide gap, will perhaps always be to us little more than consonantal skeletons, the flesh and blood of their vocalization being for the most part irretrievably lost.[14]

In common with the Semitic languages, the Berber languages of North Africa, and the Cushite languages of North-East Africa, Egyptian of all periods possesses grammatical gender, expressing masculine and feminine. Singularly few language groups have this peculiarity; and our own great Indo-European group, which possesses it, is distinguished from those above mentioned by having the neuter gender in addition. The characteristic triliteral roots of all the Semitic languages seemed to separate them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as three subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the Semitic. The biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism which was believed to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect that Egyptian might be a surviving witness to that far-off stage of the Semitic languages when triliteral roots had not yet been formed from presumed original biliterals; Sethe's investigations, however, prove that the Coptic biliterals are themselves derived from Old Egyptian triliterals, and that the triliteral roots enormously preponderated in Egyptian of the earliest known form; that view is, therefore, no longer tenable. Many remarkable resemblances have been observed in the grammatical structure of the Berber and Cushite groups with Semitic (cf. H. Zimmern, _Vergleichende Grammatik d. semitischen Sprachen_, Berlin, 1898, especially pronouns and verbs); but the relationship must be very distant, and there are no ancient documents that can take back the history of any one of those languages more than a few centuries. Their connexion with Semitic and Egyptian, therefore, remains at present an obscure though probable hypothesis. On the other hand, Egyptian is certainly related to Semitic. Even before the triliterality of Old Egyptian was recognized, Erman showed that the so-called pseudo-participle had been really in meaning and in form a precise analogue of the Semitic perfect, though its original employment was almost obsolete in the time of the earliest known texts. Triliteralism is considered the most essential and most peculiar feature of Semitic. But there are, besides, many other resemblances in structure between the Semitic languages and Egyptian, so that, although the two vocabularies present few points of clear contact, there is reason to believe that Egyptian was originally a characteristic member of the Semitic family of languages. See Erman, "Das Verhältnis d. ägyptischen zu d. semitischen Sprachen" (_Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft_, 1892); Zimmern, _Vergl. Gram._, 1898; Erman, "Flexion d. ägyptischen Verbums" (_Sitzungsberichte d. Berl. Akad._, 1900). The Egyptians proper are not, and so far as we can tell never were, Semitic in physical feature. As a possible explanation of the facts, Erman supposes that a horde of conquering Semites, like the Arabs of a later day, imposed their language on the country, but disappeared, being weakened by the climate or absorbed by the native population. The latter acquired the Semitic language imperfectly from their conquerors; they expressed the verbal conjugations by periphrases, mispronounced the consonants, and so changed greatly the appearance of the vocabulary, which also would certainly contain a large proportion of native non-Semitic roots. Strong consonants gave place to weak consonants (as [Arabic: Qaaf] has done to [Arabic sign], in the modern Arabic of Egypt), and then the weak consonants disappearing altogether produced biliterals from the triliterals. Much of this must have taken place, according to the theory, in the prehistoric period; but the loss of weak consonants, of [ayin] and of one of two repeated consonants, and the development of periphrastic conjugations continued to the end. The typical Coptic root thus became biliteral rather than triliteral, and the verb, by means of periphrases, developed tenses of remarkable precision. Such verbal resemblances as exist between Coptic and Semitic are largely due to late exchanges with Semitic neighbours.

The following sketch of the Egyptian language, mainly in its earliest form, which dates from some three or four thousand years B.C., is founded upon Erman's works. It will serve to contrast with Coptic grammar on the one hand and Semitic grammar on the other.

THE EGYPTIAN ALPHABET

[HRG: M17] = _l_; so conventionally transcribed since it unites two values, being sometimes y but often [Hebrew: alef] (especially at the beginning of words), and from the earliest times used in a manner corresponding to the Arabic _hamza_, to indicate a prosthetic vowel. Often lost.

[HRG: Z4] and [HRG: M17-M17] are frequently employed for _y_.

[HRG: G1] = '([Hebrew: alef]); easily lost or changes to _y_.

[HRG: D36] = '([Hebrew: ayin]); lost in Coptic. This rare sound, well known in Semitic, occurs also in Berber and Cushite languages.

[HRG: G43] = _w_; often changes to _y_.

[HRG: D58] = _b_.

[HRG: Q3] = _p_.

[HRG: I9] = _f_.

[HRG: G17] = _m_.

[HRG: N35] = _n_.

[HRG] = _r_; often lost, or changes to _y_. _r_ and _l_ are distinguished in later demotic and in Coptic.

[HRG] = _h_ } distinction lost in Coptic. [HRG] = _[h.]_ }

[HRG] = _h_; in Coptic [Coptic: sai] (_sh_) or [Coptic: xai] (_kh_) correspond to it.

[HRG] = _[h=]_; generally written with [HRG] (_[vs]_) in the Old Kingdom, but [HRG] corresponds to _kh_ in Coptic.

[HRG] = _s_ } distinction lost at the end of the Old Kingdom. [HRG] = _[/s]_ }

[HRG] = _[vs]_ (_sh_).

[HRG] = _q_; Coptic [Coptic: kappa].

[HRG] = _k_ } Coptic [Coptic: kappa]; or [Coptic: qima], } [Coptic: dandia], according to dialect. [HRG] = _g_ } Coptic [Coptic: kappa]; or [Coptic: qima].

[HRG] = _[t=]_; often lost at the end of words.

[HRG] = _t_ ([theta]); often changes to _t_, otherwise Coptic [Coptic: tau]; or [Coptic: dandia], [Coptic: qima].

[HRG] = _d_; in Coptic reduced to _t_.

[HRG] = _d_ (_z_); often changes to _d_, Coptic [Coptic: tau]; otherwise in Coptic [Coptic: dandia].

_ROOTS_

Egyptian roots consist of consonants and semi-consonants only, the inflexion being effected by internal vowel-change and the addition of consonants or vowels at the beginning or end. The Egyptian system of writing, as opposed to the Coptic, showed only the consonantal skeletons of words: it could not record internal vowel-changes; and semi-consonants, even when radicals, were often omitted in writing.

_PERSONAL PRONOUNS_

Sing. 1. c. _iw_ (?) later _wi_. Pl. 1. c. _n_. Du. 2. m. _kw_. 2. c. _tn_. 2. c. _tny_. f. _tn_. 3. _m_. *_fy_, surviving only 3. m. _sn_, early lost, 3. c. _sny_. in a special except as verbal form. suffix. f. _sy_. f. *_st_ surviving as 3. c.

From these are derived the suffixes, which are shortened forms attached to nouns to express the possessor, and to verbs to express the subject. In the latter case the verb was probably in the

## participle, so that _sdmii-sn_, "they hear," is literally "hearing

are they." The singular suffixes are: (1) c. _-i_; (2) m. _-k_, f. _-t_; (3) m. _-f_, f. _-s_;--the dual and plural have no special forms.

Another series of absolute pronouns is: (2) m. _twt_, _tw_; f. _tmt_, _tm_; (3) m. _swt_, _sw_; f. _stt_, _st_. Of these _twt_, _tmt_, &c., are emphatic forms.

Many of the above absolute pronouns were almost obsolete even in the Old Kingdom. In ordinary texts some survive, especially as objects of verbs, namely, _wi_, _tw_, _tn_, _sw_, _st_. The suffixes of all numbers and persons except the dual were in full use throughout, to Coptic; _sn_, however, giving way to a new suffix, _-w_, which developed first in the New Kingdom.

Another absolute pronoun of the first person is _ink_, [Coptic: Anoch] like Heb. [Hebrew: Anochi]. It is associated with a series for the second and third persons: _nt-k_, _nt-t_, _nt-f_, _nt-sn_, &c.; but from their history, use and form, it seems probable that the last are of later formation, and are not to be connected with the Semitic pronouns (chiefly of the 2nd person) resembling them.

_DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS_

There are several series based on m. _p_; f. _t_; pl. _n_; but _n_ as a plural seems later than the other two. From them are developed a weak demonstrative to which possessive suffixes can be attached, producing the definite and possessive articles (_p'_, _t'_, _n'_, "the," _p'y-f_, "his," _p'y-s_ "her," &c.) of Middle Egyptian and the later language.

_NOUNS_

Two genders, m. (ending _w_, or nothing), f. (ending _t_). Three numbers: singular, dual (m. _wi_, f. _ti_, gradually became obsolete), plural (m. _w_; f. _wt_). No case-endings are recognizable, but construct forms--to judge by Coptic--were in use. Masculine and feminine nouns of instrument or material are formed from verbal roots by prefixing _m_; e.g. _m·sdm·t_, "stibium," from _sdm_, "paint the eye." Substantives and adjectives are formed from substantives and prepositions by the addition of _y_ in the masculine; e.g. _n·t_, "city," _nt·y_, "belonging to a city," "citizen"; _hr_, "upon," _hr·y_ (f. _hr·t_; pl. _hr·w)_, "upper." This is not unlike the Semitic _nisbe_ ending _iy_, _ay_ (e.g. Ar. _beled_, "city," _beledi_, "belonging to a city"). Adjectives follow the nouns they qualify.

_NUMERALS_

1, _w'_; 2, _sn_; 3, _hmt_; 4, _fdw_; 5, _dw'_; 6, _sis_ (or _sw'_ ?); 7, _sfh_; 8, _hmn_; 9, _psd_; 10, _mt_. 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 (?) resemble Semitic numerals. 20 and 30 (_m'b_) had special names; 40-90 were named as if plurals of the units 4-9, as in Semitic. 100, _snt_; 1000, _h'_; 10,000, _zb'_; 100,000, _hfnw_.

_VERBS_

The forms observable in hieroglyphic writing lead to the following classification:--

STRONG VERBS. Biliteral Often showing traces of an original III. inf.; in early times very rare.

Triliteral Very numerous.

{ Generally formed by reduplication. Quadriliteral { In Late Egyptian they were no longer Quinqueliteral { inflected, and were conjugated with the help { of _iry_, "do."

WEAK VERBS. II. geminatae Properly triliterals, but, with the 2nd or 3rd radical alike, these coalesced in many forms where no vowel intervened, and gave the word the appearance of a biliteral.

III. gem. Rare.

III. inf. Numerous. III. _w_, and III. _i_ were unified early. Some very common verbs, "do," "give," "come," "bring" are irregular.

IV. inf. Partly derived from adjectival formations in _y_, from nouns and infinitives:--e.g. _s·ip_, inf. _sipt_; adj. _sipty_; verb (4 lit.), _sipty_.

Many verbs with weak consonants--I_y_, I_w_, II. inf. (_m[w]t_), and those with [Hebrew: alef]--are particularly difficult to trace accurately, owing to defective writing.

It seems that all the above classes may be divided into two main groups, according to the form of the infinitive:--with masculine infinitive the strong triliteral type, and with feminine infinitive the type of the III. inf. The former group includes all except III. inf., IV. inf., and the causative of the biliterals, which belong to the second group.

It is probable that the verb had a special form denoting condition, as in Arabic. There was a causative form prefixing _s_, and traces of forms resembling _Pi'el_ and _Niphal_ are observed. Some roots are reduplicated wholly or in part with a frequentative meaning, and there are traces of gemination of radicals.