Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/800

* EGYPT. 694 EGYPT. be to the average Italian of the present day. Egptoloj;ists distinguish the following chief periods of the language: (1) Old Egyptian, the classical language of the Old Empire, l.ong after it had ceased to be spoken, it led an artificial existence as a learned language, playing much the same part as Latin played in mcdia>val Europe, and was regularly employed for religious and monumental purposes down to the Roman period. Careful ]ihilological training was not, however, a distinguisliiiig characteristic of tlie Egyptian scribes, and therefore texts composed in Old Egyptian after B.C. 1000 are all had imitations of earlier monuments; those written after B.C. 500 are barbarous. The best grammar of Old Egvptian is Erman, Altiigyptisclie (Irammatik (Berlin. 1894: English trans.. London, 1894). (2) Aliddle Egyptian, the popxilar language of the Middle Empire. It represents an intermedi- ate stage between the language of the Old and that of the ew Empire. ^lost of the old forms and inflections are retained, but some of the pe- culiarities of the later speech begin to make their appearance. This stage of Egyptian is treated by Erman in his Die Sprache dcs Pnpi/yus Westcar (tiottingen, 1889). (.3) Neo-Egjptian. the popu- lar language of the Xew Empire (about B.C. 1500- 1000) . It is represented by a considerable number of papyri written almost exclusively in the hierat- ic character, and containing chiefly talcs, poems, letters, and legal documents. This period of the language is exhaustively treated in Erman, yetMgnptisclie Gramriintilx' (Leipzig. 1880). (4) Late PZgyptian, the popular language in use from about B.C. 700 to the Christian Era. It is often called demotic, but this is not strictly correct, since the term demotic properly designates not the language of this period, but the script in which it is written. Late Egyptian is repre- sented by a large number of papyri written in the demotic script. They contain chiefly legal and commercial documents, letters, and magical texts, together with a few tales. There is no good treat- ment of this subject. The best is by Brugsch, Gram- maire demotiqiie (Paris, 1855), but that is anti- quated, (5) Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt, and the latest descendant of Old Egyp- tian. It is written in a modification of the Greek alphabet with the addition of some <haracters derived from demotic, and in its vocabulary it has borrowed freely from the Greek. A number of local dialects may be distinguished. As a spoken language it died out (mly about 300 years ago, and it is still employed as the ritual lan- guage of the Coptic Church. Coptic possesses an extensive literature, which is almost entirely of a religious character and includes many trans- lations from Greek works. The stajidard gram- mar of the language is Stern, Koplischc Ornm- matik (Leipzig, 1880) : SteindorfT, Koptische Orammatik (Berlin, 1894), is, however, better adapted to the needs of lieginners. Both Erman's Altiiijyptische flmmmatik and SteindorfT's Kop- linche flmmmatik contain useful bililiographies, which together cover all the periods of the lan- guage. In Egyptian, as in the Semitic languages, tri- consonantal stems prevailed, though even in the oldest texts many stems bad been reduced by corruption to a bi-eonsonantal scheme. Quad- rilitcrals and quinquiliterals were formed, chiefly by partial reduplication. As in Coptic, each word had but one fill vowel, which stood either in the penult or ultima. In closed syllables it was short ; in open syllables it was long. The accent of a word rested upon the syllable con- taining the full vowel. As in Semitic, each word or syllable must begin with a consonant. The language possessed both independent and suffi.xed per.sonal pronouns, which were employed much as in Semitic. The number of the demonstrative pronouns is considcralilc. In Old Egyptian there was no article: the definite article first comes into use in .Middle Egyptian, and tlie indefinite article in Nco-Egjptian. In the substantive and in the verb, two genders were distinguished, masculine and feminine, the latter standing also for the neuter. As in Semitic, the feminine end- ing of the substantive was /. There were iiiree numbers — singular, dual, and plural, each dis- tinguished by special endings, but the dual early became obsolete. The old inflection of the verb, formed by the addition of certain prononiina' endings to the stem, resemliled the Semitic per- fect, and distinguished, apparently by difference of vocalization, an :ictive-passive and a passive- intransitive form ; but the former was almost obsolete at the time of the earliest texts. The later inflection was formed by suffixing a per- sonal pronoun to a participial form. Both active and passive forms are distinguished. Auxiliary verbs are found in the oldest texts: in the later stages of the language, they are employed with increasing frequency, and in Coptic, with the ex- ception of a few survivals, conjugation by means of auxiliary verbs in combination with the in- finitive or ]iarticiple has entirely supplanted the older modes of inflection, A causative was formed by prefixing .s- to the stem, and it is prob- able that other derived conjugations may have existed at a very remote period. There are, at least, traces of a reflexive form with prefixed ", like the Semitic Xiphal, The verb also formed a participle, an imperative, and an infinitive: the last named had both masculine and femi- nine forms and was treated like a noun. The genitive relation was originally expressed by simple juxtaposition, the accent, as in the Semitic construct connection, shifting to the second word. It was later expressed by means of a particle (originally a demonstrative pron(ain) placed before the nomin rectum. The structure of the sentence was generally simple. The pre- vailing order was Aerb, subject, direct object, in- direct object. This, however, might be modified by special circumstances. A pronoun, for ex- ample, preceded a noun, and a word might be placed out of the usual order for the sake of emphasis. Consult, in addition to the gram- matical works cited above: Sethe. Or/.t iiin/ptiiche ^^<■rbum (I..eipzig, 1899-1902), and Erman, '"Die Flexion des ag>"ptischen Verbums," in f^itziinijs- herichic dcr koni;iIiclicii pnusxischen Akndcmie dcr M'isscnschnftrii zii Hrrliii, .xix. (1000). V riti.no. The hieroglyphic system of writing was believed by the Egyptians to have been in vented by the god Thoth, who instructed the in- habitants of the Nile Valley in its use. It is found fully developed on the most ancient monu- ments, and continued to be used for monumental inscriptiims down to the Roman period. The latest hieroglyphic inscription dates from the year a.d. 2,50. (See Esne.) The individual characters or hieroglyphs are pictures of men, I