Changes in Ancient Egyptian Language (original) (raw)

The Spread of Alphabetic Scripts (c. 1700--500 BCE)

Diogenes, 2008

This article considers the origins of alphabetic writing, tracing its probable source to ancient Egypt, southern Levant or the Sinai during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (17th century BCE). It supports the view that the earliest scripts were acrophonic representations of a West-Semitic language, whose use developed under the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt but was arrested there with the expulsion of this foreign dynasty at the end of the 16th century BCE. The development is then traced through the Levant, with particular attention given to the emergence of cuneiform alphabetic scripts in Ugarit (c. 1300 BCE). This form of writing disappeared with the fall of Ugarit, but linear alphabetic scripts were preserved in a variety of Near-Eastern languages, notably Aramaic and Phoenician. These two languages, by becoming linguae francae respectively of the Syria-northern Mesopotamia and the Anatolia-Eastern Mediterranean regions, brought about the spread of alphabetic writing up until the 8th ce...

On the Demise of Egyptian Writing. Working on a Problematic Source Basis

J. Baines, J. Bennet, S. Houston (Hg.), The Disappearance of Writing Systems, London, 157–181, 2008

For the study of the end of Egyptian writing systems demotic is of special relevance because Egyptian texts continued to be notated in demotic long after other Egyptian scripts were abandoned. Demotic underwent dramatic changes from being originally an everyday script to one that became perfectly acceptable for religious texts. However, the case of hieroglyphic and its demise is also revealing and should be compared to the end of demotic. After summarizing the models that Egyptologists have proposed for interpreting the disappearance of Egyptian scripts and culture, the ups and downs of Egyptian writing competence throughout Egyptian history is sketched. Do the available sources and data allow us to draw definite conclusions? The impact of increasing complexity in hieroglyphic temple inscriptions in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods is discussed in the wider context of the development of intellectual trends in that epoch. It is argued that demotic seemingly followed the same trajectory to its demise as hieroglyphic when it applied so-called un-etymological or phonetic writings, which turned demotic into a script of restricted knowledge. However, all must remain hypothetical because of the high number of yet unpublished demotic texts.

The Origins and Early Development of Writing in Egypt

The Egyptian writing system represents one of the oldest recorded languages known to humankind, along with Sumerian. But the system took centuries to adapt to what we now regard as its primary function: the encoding of continuous speech. Major changes in the historical and social-linguistic environment of late Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt (ca. 3250–2700 BC) left traces in the written communication and steered significant developments in the early writing system. After a brief introduction of the earliest evidence of writing in Egypt, this chapter will focus on the long and complex process of creating, extending, and standardizing the early hieroglyphic sign corpus. It will propose possible explanations for the dramatic decrease in the number of signs in the beginning of the third millennium BC.

Different aspects related to the most ancient Egyptian writing

Préhistoire de l'écriture-Prehistories of Writing, 2015

The main aim of the present paper is to open a debate of the multiple features related to the origin of writing in Egypt. Although some questions arose in the past, overall referred to the original place where emerged the Egyptian writing, there are still many other questions waiting for discussion: why was the writing invented? How was the writing constructed? Which was the origin of some of the earliest signs? These are just some of several questions that arise when we approach to the subject. In the present article, some ideas will be exposed together with an historic and cultural contextualization of the period in which writing emerged in Egypt.

The Mysterious Way to Write in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs

The Mysterious Way to Write in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, 2021

Ancient Egyptians developed a mysterious type of writing in Egyptian Hieroglyphs. It is the cryptographic hieroglyphic system, and it was in use to hide meanings from untrained eyes, and for a wide variety of purposes. Cryptography was created earlier and continued through the various ages until it spread as a distinctive feature of the temples of the Greco-Roman era. What is cryptographic writing, then? And what is its purpose?