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104-532: The major Coptic dialects are Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic, Fayyumic, Lycopolitan, and Oxyrhynchite. Sahidic Coptic was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as a literary language across Egypt in the period c.  325  – c.  800 AD. Bohairic, the language of the Nile Delta , gained prominence in the 9th century and is the dialect used by the Coptic Church. In Coptic

208-742: A literary language , and was also the language of the New Kingdom administration. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt and later. Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature , comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun , the love poems of the Chester–Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Any . Instructions became

312-566: A synthetic language , Egyptian by the Late Egyptian phase had become an analytic language . The relationship between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian has been described as being similar to that between Latin and Italian. The Late Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 8th century BC, giving rise to Demotic. Demotic is a later development of the Egyptian language written in the Demotic script , following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic ,

416-550: A few have survived that were written in hieratic and (later) demotic. There was also a form of cursive hieroglyphs , used for religious documents on papyrus, such as the Book of the Dead of the Twentieth Dynasty ; it was simpler to write than the hieroglyphs in stone inscriptions, but it was not as cursive as hieratic and lacked the wide use of ligatures . Additionally, there was a variety of stone-cut hieratic, known as "lapidary hieratic". In

520-488: A few specialists in the language. For all other purposes, the Egyptological pronunciation is used, but it often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was pronounced. The following consonants are reconstructed for Archaic (before 2600 BC) and Old Egyptian (2686–2181 BC), with IPA equivalents in square brackets if they differ from the usual transcription scheme: / l / has no independent representation in

624-400: A local aristocratic family. It remained in possession of the family until 1995 when it was sold to the state. There are plans to restore the mansion and turn it into a museum. 27°11′N 31°10′E  /  27.183°N 31.167°E  / 27.183; 31.167 Old Egyptian language The Egyptian language , or Ancient Egyptian ( r n kmt ; "speech of Egypt")

728-458: A nominal feminine suffix * -at , a nominal prefix m- , an adjectival suffix -ī and characteristic personal verbal affixes. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, linguists have variously suggested that the Egyptian language shares its greatest affinities with Berber and Semitic languages, particularly Arabic (which is spoken in Egypt today) and Hebrew . However, other scholars have argued that

832-442: A popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. Late Egyptian was also the language of New Kingdom administration. Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the difference between Middle and Old Egyptian. Originally

936-444: A scribe jokes that his colleague's writing is incoherent like "the speech of a Delta man with a man of Elephantine ." Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian that, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from northern and southern dialects of Egyptian. Written Coptic has five major dialects, which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably

1040-402: A sentence, as the object of a verb, or with a preposition. Dependent pronouns are a series of prefixes and suffixes that can attach to verbs and other nouns. Coptic verbs can therefore be said to inflect for the person, number and gender of the subject and the object: a pronominal prefix marks the subject, and a pronominal suffix marks the object, e.g. "I I'have'it the ball." When (as in this case)

1144-496: A stressed vowel (⟨ bjn ⟩ = */ˈbaːjin/ 'bad') and as ⟨ jj ⟩ word-medially immediately before a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḫꜥjjk⟩ = */χaʕˈjak/ 'you will appear') and are unmarked word-finally (⟨ jt ⟩ = /ˈjaːtVj/ 'father'). In Middle Egyptian (2055–1650 BC), a number of consonantal shifts take place. By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom period, / z / and / s / had merged, and

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1248-502: A stressed vowel in syllables that had been closed in earlier Egyptian (compare ⲛⲟⲩⲃ < */ˈnaːbaw/ 'gold' and ⲧⲁⲡ < * /dib/ 'horn'). The phonemes /d g z/ occur only in Greek loanwords, with rare exceptions triggered by a nearby /n/ : ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ/ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ < ꜥ.t n.t sbꜣ.w 'school'. Earlier *d ḏ g q are preserved as ejective t' c' k' k ' before vowels in Coptic. Although

1352-408: A supralinear stroke ⟨◌̄⟩, or the stroke may have tied letters together in one word, since Coptic texts did not otherwise indicate word divisions. Some scribal traditions use a diaeresis over the letters ⲓ and ⲩ at the beginning of a word or to mark a diphthong. Bohairic uses a superposed point or small stroke known as ϫⲓⲛⲕⲓⲙ ( jinkim , "movement"). When jinkim is placed over a vowel it

1456-593: A tenuis-aspirate distinction to voiced-tenuis is only attested from the alveolars, the only place that Arabic has such a contrast. Earlier phases of Egyptian may have contrasted voiceless and voiced bilabial plosives, but the distinction seems to have been lost. Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic all interchangeably use their respective graphemes to indicate either sound; for example, Coptic for 'iron' appears alternately as ⲡⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ , ⲃⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ and ⲃⲓⲛⲓⲃⲉ . That probably reflects dialect variation. Both letters were interchanged with ⲫ and ϥ to indicate / f / , and ⲃ

1560-501: A testament to the increasing cultural contact between Egyptians and Greeks even before Alexander the Great 's conquest of Egypt. Coptic itself, or Old Coptic , takes root in the first century. The transition from the older Egyptian scripts to the newly adapted Coptic alphabet was in part due to the decline of the traditional role played by the priestly class of ancient Egyptian religion , who, unlike most ordinary Egyptians, were literate in

1664-634: A transliteration of the corresponding Demotic "alphabetical" sign(s) in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . More changes occur in the 1st millennium BC and the first centuries AD, leading to Coptic (1st or 3rd – c. 19th centuries AD). In Sahidic ẖ ḫ ḥ had merged into ϣ š (most often from ḫ ) and ϩ / h / (most often ẖ ḥ ). Bohairic and Akhmimic are more conservative and have a velar fricative / x / ( ϧ in Bohairic, ⳉ in Akhmimic). Pharyngeal *ꜥ had merged into glottal / ʔ / after it had affected

1768-461: A uniliteral hieroglyph. Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar noted that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African", reflecting the local wildlife of North Africa, the Levant and southern Mediterranean. In "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence [North] African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects

1872-534: A vowel's grapheme but mostly unwritten. A few early manuscripts have a letter ⳋ or ⳃ ç where Sahidic and Bohairic have ϣ š . and Akhmimic has ⳉ x . This sound seems to have been lost early on. Coptic is agglutinative with subject–verb–object word order but can be verb–subject–object with the correct preposition in front of the subject. Number, gender, tense, and mood are indicated by prefixes that come from Late Egyptian. The earlier phases of Egyptian did this through suffixation. Some vestiges of

1976-544: Is also a lowering in elevation in mid Egypt , from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea . This gives the city and nearby towns and villages the similar properties of a continental climate , meaning that the city has harsh and chilly cold winter weather, and very hot but non-humid summers . During summer the temperature can exceed 42 °C (108 °F). Yet, in winter Asyut gets below 0 °C (32 °F) temperatures during

2080-490: Is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language because of a greater number of sources indicating Egyptian sounds, including cuneiform letters containing transcriptions of Egyptian words and phrases, and Egyptian renderings of Northwest Semitic names. Coptic sounds, in addition, are known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa. They date to

2184-587: Is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as " Middle Egyptian ," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period . By the time of classical antiquity , the spoken language had evolved into Demotic , and by the Roman era , diversified into various Coptic dialects . These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after

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2288-481: Is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt . It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest known written languages , first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC . It

2392-470: Is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, including a finite verb , which has been found. Discovered in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (dated c.  2690 BC ), the seal impression reads: Extensive texts appear from about 2600 BC. An early example is the Diary of Merer . The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. One of its distinguishing characteristics

2496-511: Is difficult to explain ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ . However, it generally became / æ / in stressed monosyllables, / ɪ / in unstressed monosyllables, and in polysyllables, / æ / when followed by / i / , and / ɪ / when not. There were no doubled orthographic vowels in Mesokemic. Some representative correspondences with Sahidic are: It is not clear if these correspondences reflect distinct pronunciations in Mesokemic, or if they are an imitation of

2600-413: Is expressed with a series of possessive articles which are prefixed to the noun. These articles agree with the person , number , and gender of the possessor and the number and gender of the possessed noun. The forms of the possessive article vary according to dialect. Coptic pronouns are of two kinds, dependent and independent. Independent pronouns are used when the pronoun is acting as the subject of

2704-697: Is home to a large textile industry. The city also produces fine pottery, inlaid woodwork, and rugs. Asyut is the terminus of the Ras Shukheir-Asyut oil pipeline , the terminus of the Cairo -Asyut gas pipeline and the beginning of the proposed Asyut- Qena gas pipeline, the last two being part of the Nile Valley Gas Company Pipeline Project. Aysut is next to the Aysut Dam across the Nile river in

2808-658: Is likely because the majority of Coptic religious texts are direct translations of Greek works. What invariably attracts the attention of the reader of a Coptic text, especially if it is written in the Sa'idic dialect, is the very liberal use which is made of Greek loan words, of which so few, indeed, are to be found in the Ancient Egyptian language. There Greek loan words occur everywhere in Coptic literature, be it Biblical, liturgical, theological, or non-literary, i.e. legal documents and personal letters. Though nouns and verbs predominate,

2912-475: Is located at 27°11′00″N 31°10′00″E  /  27.18333°N 31.16667°E  / 27.18333; 31.16667 , while the ancient city is located at 27°10′00″N 31°08′00″E  /  27.16667°N 31.13333°E  / 27.16667; 31.13333 . The city is home to one of the largest Coptic Catholic churches in the country. The name of the city is derived from early Egyptian Zawty ( Z3JW.TJ ) (late Egyptian, Səyáwt ) adopted into

3016-449: Is not a contrastive feature; all obstruents are voiceless and all sonorants are voiced. Stops may be either aspirated or tenuis (unaspirated), although there is evidence that aspirates merged with their tenuis counterparts in certain environments. The following table presents the consonants of Demotic Egyptian. The reconstructed value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by

3120-424: Is not sufficient to demonstrate that these are distinct vowels, and if they are, the difference has a very low functional load . For dialects that use orthographic ⟨ ⲉⲓ ⟩ for a single vowel, there appears to be no phonetic difference from ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . Double orthographic vowels are presumed here to be long, as that makes the morphology more straightforward. (Another common interpretation

3224-826: Is possible that in addition there was a glottal stop , ʔ , that was not consistently written. Coptic does not seem to have had a glottal stop at the beginning of orthographically vowel-initial words. It is possible that vowels written double were an attempt to indicate glottal stop, rather than a long vowel, in the middle of a word. However, there is little evidence for this (e.g., Arabic words with short vowels and glottal stop are not written with double vowels in Coptic, and Coptic words with double orthographic vowels are transcribed with long vowels rather than hamza in Arabic.) In Late Coptic (ca. 14th century), Bohairic sounds that did not occur in Egyptian Arabic were lost. A possible shift from

Coptic language - Misplaced Pages Continue

3328-444: Is pronounced independently, and when it is placed over a consonant a short ⲉ precedes it. The oldest Coptic writings date to the pre-Christian era (Old Coptic), though Coptic literature consists mostly of texts written by prominent saints of the Coptic Church such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great and Shenoute. Shenoute helped fully standardise the Coptic language through his many sermons, treatises and homilies, which formed

3432-439: Is safe to assume that the everyday speech of the native population retained, to a greater extent, its indigenous Egyptian character, which is sometimes reflected in Coptic nonecclesiastical documents such as letters and contracts. Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology from its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress patterns. The phonological system of Later Egyptian

3536-399: Is sometimes reserved for the earliest use of hieroglyphs, from the late fourth through the early third millennia BC. At the earliest stage, around 3300 BC, hieroglyphs were not a fully developed writing system , being at a transitional stage of proto-writing ; over the time leading up to the 27th century BC, grammatical features such as nisba formation can be seen to occur. Old Egyptian

3640-454: Is that Coptic articles are prefixes. Masculine nouns are marked with the article /pə, peː/ and feminine nouns with the article /tə, teː/ in the Sahidic dialect and /pi, əp/ and /ti, ət/ in the Bohairic dialect. The definite and indefinite articles also indicate number ; however, only definite articles mark gender. Coptic has a number of broken plurals , a vestige of Older Egyptian, but in

3744-405: Is that these represented glottal stop.) There is no length distinction in final stressed position, but only those vowels that occur long appear there: ⟨ (ⲉ)ⲓ, ⲉ, ⲁ, ⲟ~ⲱ, ⲟⲩ ⟩ . In Sahidic, the letter ⲉ was used for short / e / before back fricatives, and also for unstressed schwa / ə / . It's possible there was also a distinction between short / ɛ / and / a / , but if so

3848-621: Is the Greek oasis ( ὄασις ), which comes directly from Egyptian wḥꜣt or Demotic wḥj . However, Coptic reborrowed some words of Ancient Egyptian origin into its lexicon, via Greek. For example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use the word ebenos , which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος ("ebony"), originally from Egyptian hbnj . Many place names in modern Egypt are Arabic adaptations of their former Coptic names : The Coptic name ⲡⲁⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ , papnoute (from Egyptian pꜣy-pꜣ-nṯr ), means "belonging to God" or "he of God". It

3952-424: Is the best-documented variety of the language, and has attracted the most attention by far from Egyptology . While most Middle Egyptian is seen written on monuments by hieroglyphs, it was also written using a cursive variant , and the related hieratic . Middle Egyptian first became available to modern scholarship with the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century. The first grammar of Middle Egyptian

4056-406: Is the tripling of ideograms , phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language, though it is based on a different dialect. In the period of the 3rd dynasty ( c.  2650  – c.  2575 BC ), many of the principles of hieroglyphic writing were regularized. From that time on, until

4160-626: Is today spoken liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church (along with Modern Standard Arabic ). The language is spoken only in Egypt and historically has had little influence outside of the territory, except for monasteries located in Nubia . Coptic's most noticeable linguistic influence has been on the various dialects of Egyptian Arabic , which is characterised by a Coptic substratum in lexical , morphological , syntactical , and phonological features. In addition to influencing

4264-462: Is usually the result of consonant voicing in proximity to / n / . Though there is no clear evidence that Coptic had a glottal stop , different orthographic means have been posited for indicating one by those who believe that it did: with ⲁ word-initially, with ⲓ word-finally in monosyllabic words in northern dialects and ⲉ in monosyllabic words in Akhmimic and Assiutic, by reduplication of

Coptic language - Misplaced Pages Continue

4368-512: The Coptic as Syowt ⲥⲓⲟⲟⲩⲧ [sɪˈjowt] , which means " Guardian " of the northern approach of Upper Egypt . In Graeco-Roman Egypt , it was called Lycopolis or Lykopolis ( Greek : Λυκόπολις , " ἡ Λύκων πόλις "), ('wolf city') Lycon , or Lyco . Ancient Asyut was the capital of the Thirteenth Nome of Upper Egypt ( Lycopolites Nome ) around 3100 BC. It was located on

4472-503: The Coptic Catholic Church . Most hieroglyphic Egyptian texts are written in a literary prestige register rather than the vernacular speech variety of their author. As a result, dialectical differences are not apparent in written Egyptian until the adoption of the Coptic alphabet . Nevertheless, it is clear that these differences existed before the Coptic period. In one Late Egyptian letter (dated c.  1200 BC ),

4576-577: The Middle Ages . Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase, which started to be written in the New Kingdom of Egypt . Later Egyptian represented colloquial speech of the later periods. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation. Coptic, therefore, is a reference to both the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic and the new writing system that

4680-566: The Muslim conquest of Egypt , although Bohairic Coptic remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church . The Egyptian language branch belongs to the Afroasiatic language family . Among the typological features of Egyptian that are typically Afroasiatic are its fusional morphology, nonconcatenative morphology , a series of emphatic consonants , a three-vowel system /a i u/ ,

4784-505: The Ramessid tombs of Siese and Amenhotep . In Graeco-Roman times, there was a distinct dialect of Coptic spoken in Asyut, known as " Lycopolitan ", after the Greek name for the city. Lesser-used names for this dialect are "Sub-Akhmimic" and "Assiutic". A large Byzantine Treasure was discovered near the city in the early twentieth century and is now dispersed amongst a number of museums in

4888-566: The cathedral of the Mother of Divine Love, in Assyut. (all Coptic Rite ) Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert (BWh). It is the driest city of Egypt . Luxor , Minya , Qena and Asyut have the widest difference of temperatures between days and nights of any city in Egypt, with almost 16 °C (29 °F) difference. The city of Asyut is sandwiched between two mountain ranges of about 600m height. There

4992-573: The hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Demotic is the name of the script derived from the hieratic beginning in the 7th century BC. The Coptic alphabet was derived from the Greek alphabet , with adaptations for Egyptian phonology. It was first developed in the Ptolemaic period , and gradually replaced the Demotic script in about the 4th to 5th centuries of the Christian era. The term "Archaic Egyptian"

5096-455: The spread of Islam in the seventh century. At the turn of the eighth century, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek as the sole administrative language . Literary Coptic gradually declined, and within a few hundred years, Egyptian bishop Severus ibn al-Muqaffa found it necessary to write his History of the Patriarchs in Arabic. However, ecclesiastically

5200-476: The 13th century, though it seems to have survived as a spoken language until the 17th century and in some localities even longer. From the medieval period, there is one known example of tarsh -printed Coptic. The fragmentary amulet A.Ch. 12.145, now in the Austrian National Library , contains a frame of Coptic text around an Arabic main text. In the early 20th century, some Copts tried to revive

5304-670: The 14th century. Today, the city of Asyut has almost 400,000 inhabitants. It is the Egyptian city with one of the highest Coptic Christian concentrations of approximately 50%. It is also home to the Assiut University , one of the largest universities in Egypt , to the Assiut Barrage , and to the Lillian Trasher Orphanage . The city is one of the only cities in the world that still makes silver appliqué-work shawls and

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5408-478: The Coptic alphabet, flourished in the second and third centuries. However, it was not until Shenoute that Coptic became a fully standardised literary language based on the Sahidic dialect. Shenouda's native Egyptian tongue and knowledge of Greek and rhetoric gave him the necessary tools to elevate Coptic, in content and style, to a literary height nearly equal to the position of the Egyptian language in ancient Egypt. The Muslim conquest of Egypt by Arabs came with

5512-486: The Coptic language, but they were unsuccessful. In the second half of the 20th century, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive Coptic. Several works of grammar were published, including a more comprehensive dictionary than had been formerly available. The scholarly findings of the field of Egyptology and the inauguration of the Institute of Coptic Studies further contributed to

5616-432: The Egyptian deserts. In time, the growth of these communities generated the need to write Christian Greek instructions in the Egyptian language. The early Fathers of the Coptic Church , such as Anthony the Great , Pachomius the Great , Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius of Alexandria , who otherwise usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian monks in Egyptian. The Egyptian language, now written in

5720-603: The Egyptian language shared closer linguistic ties with northeastern African regions. There are two theories that seek to establish the cognate sets between Egyptian and Afroasiatic, the traditional theory and the neuere Komparatistik , founded by Semiticist Otto Rössler. According to the neuere Komparatistik , in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/ : Egyptian ꜥr.t 'portal', Semitic dalt 'door'. The traditional theory instead disputes

5824-463: The Fayyumic dialect, a feature of earlier Egyptian) and [ k ] and [ ɡ ] , with the voiceless stop consonants being more common in Coptic words and the voiced ones in Greek borrowings. Apart from the liquid consonants , this pattern may indicate a sound change in Later Egyptian, leading to a neutralisation of voiced alveolar and velar plosives. When the voiced plosives are realised, it

5928-475: The Greek loan words may come from any other part of speech except pronouns' Words or concepts for which no adequate Egyptian translation existed were taken directly from Greek to avoid altering the meaning of the religious message. In addition, other Egyptian words that would have adequately translated the Greek equivalents were not used as they were perceived as having overt pagan associations. Old Coptic texts use many such words, phrases and epithets ; for example,

6032-592: The Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian is probably more conservative, and Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern. Although Egyptian is the oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is very different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic languages in general, and Semitic languages in particular. There are multiple possibilities: perhaps Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before it

6136-502: The West. The hoard is composed of some of the most elaborate jewellery to survive from late antiquity . Asyut was at the end of the 40 Day Road that connected the city to Darfur through the Selima and Kharga Oases . The history of the road, known by local herders as Darb al-Arba'in , goes back over 700 years. It was used as a pathway for great caravans of up to 12,000 camels at its peak in

6240-473: The basis of early Coptic literature. The core lexicon of Coptic is Egyptian , most closely related to the preceding Demotic phase of the language. Up to 40% of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek , but borrowings are not always fully adapted to the Coptic phonological system and may have semantic differences as well. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots. However, that

6344-403: The city of Elephantine by packs of wolves. Osiris was worshipped under the symbol of a wolf at Lycopolis. According to a myth, he had come "from the shades" as a wolf to aid Isis and Horus in their combat with Typhon . Other ancient Egyptian monuments discovered in Asyut include; the Asyut necropolis (west of the modern city), tombs which date to dynasties Nine , Ten and Twelve , and

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6448-637: The emphatic consonants were realised is unknown. Early research had assumed that the opposition in stops was one of voicing, but it is now thought to be either one of tenuis and emphatic consonants , as in many Semitic languages, or one of aspirated and ejective consonants , as in many Cushitic languages . Since vowels were not written until Coptic, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain and rely mainly on evidence from Coptic and records of Egyptian words, especially proper nouns, in other languages/writing systems. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by

6552-439: The end of a stressed syllable and eventually null word-finally: ⟨pḏ.t⟩ */ˈpiːɟat/ > Akkadian transcription -pi-ta 'bow'. The most important source of information about Demotic phonology is Coptic. The consonant inventory of Demotic can be reconstructed on the basis of evidence from the Coptic dialects. Demotic orthography is relatively opaque . The Demotic "alphabetical" signs are mostly inherited from

6656-532: The first known Coptic text, still pagan ( Old Coptic ), from the 1st century AD. Coptic survived into the medieval period, but by the 16th century was dwindling rapidly due to the persecution of Coptic Christians under the Mamluks . It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and

6760-487: The functional load was extremely low. Bohairic did not have long vowels. / i / was only written ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . As above, it's possible that / u / and / o / were distinct vowels rather than just allophones. In Late Coptic (that is, Late Bohairic), the vowels were reduced to those found in Egyptian Arabic, /a, i, u/ . ⟨ ⲱ, ⲟ ⟩ became / u / , ⟨ ⲉ ⟩ became / æ / , and ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ became either / ɪ / or / æ / . It

6864-500: The grammar, vocabulary and syntax of Egyptian Arabic, Coptic has lent to both Arabic and Modern Hebrew such words as: A few words of Coptic origin are found in the Greek language ; some of the words were later lent to various European languages — such as barge , from Coptic baare ( ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ , "small boat"). However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek and subsequently into other European languages came directly from Ancient Egyptian, often Demotic . An example

6968-655: The graphemes ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are used interchangeably. In addition, / j / had become / ʔ / word-initially in an unstressed syllable (⟨ jwn ⟩ /jaˈwin/ > */ʔaˈwin/ "colour") and after a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḥjpw⟩ */ˈħujpVw/ > /ˈħeʔp(Vw)/ '[the god] Apis'). In Late Egyptian (1069–700 BC), the phonemes d ḏ g gradually merge with their counterparts t ṯ k ( ⟨dbn⟩ */ˈdiːban/ > Akkadian transcription ti-ba-an 'dbn-weight'). Also, ṯ ḏ often become /t d/ , but they are retained in many lexemes ; ꜣ becomes / ʔ / ; and /t r j w/ become / ʔ / at

7072-435: The hieroglyphic orthography, and it is frequently written as if it were / n / or / r / . That is probably because the standard for written Egyptian is based on a dialect in which / l / had merged with other sonorants. Also, the rare cases of / ʔ / occurring are not represented. The phoneme / j / is written as ⟨ j ⟩ in the initial position (⟨ jt ⟩ = */ˈjaːtVj/ 'father') and immediately after

7176-519: The hieroglyphic script, and due to historical sound changes they do not always map neatly onto Demotic phonemes . However, the Demotic script does feature certain orthographic innovations, such as the use of the sign h̭ for / ç /, which allow it to represent sounds that were not present in earlier forms of Egyptian. The Demotic consonants can be divided into two primary classes: obstruents ( stops , affricates and fricatives ) and sonorants ( approximants , nasals , and semivowels ). Voice

7280-474: The language is called ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( timetremǹkhēmi ) "Egyptian" or ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( tiaspi ǹremǹkhēmi ) "the Egyptian language". Coptic also possessed the term ⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲥ ( gyptios ) "Egyptian", derived from Greek Αἰγύπτιος ( Aigúptios ). This was borrowed into Arabic as ‏ قبْط ‎ ( qibṭ/qubṭ ), and from there into the languages of Europe, giving rise to words like French copte and English Copt . Coptic

7384-417: The language retained an important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period. Until the 10th century, Coptic remained the spoken language of the native population outside the capital. The Coptic language massively declined under the hands of Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah , as part of his campaigns of religious persecution. He issued strict orders completely prohibiting

7488-464: The language's final stage of development, the Coptic alphabet replaced the older writing system. Hieroglyphs are employed in two ways in Egyptian texts: as ideograms to represent the idea depicted by the pictures and, more commonly, as phonograms to represent their phonetic value. As the phonetic realization of Egyptian cannot be known with certainty, Egyptologists use a system of transliteration to denote each sound that could be represented by

7592-406: The latter of which it shares much with. In the earlier stages of Demotic, such as those texts written in the early Demotic script, it probably represented the spoken idiom of the time. However, as its use became increasingly confined to literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, leading to significant diglossia between the late Demotic texts and

7696-439: The long Greek vowels ⟨η, ω⟩ . As with the vowels, there are differences of opinion over the correct interpretation of the Coptic consonant letters, particularly with regard to the letters ϫ and ϭ . ϫ is transcribed as ⟨j⟩ in many older Coptic sources and ϭ as ⟨ɡ⟩ or ⟨č⟩ . Lambdin (1983) notes that the current conventional pronunciations are different from

7800-422: The majority of cases, the article marks number. Generally, nouns inflected for plurality end in /wə/ , but there are some irregularities. The dual was another feature of earlier Egyptian that survives in Coptic in only few words, such as ⲥⲛⲁⲩ ( snau ) 'two'. Words of Greek origin keep their original grammatical gender, except for neuter nouns, which become masculine in Coptic. Possession of definite nouns

7904-462: The medieval Islamic period, when Coptic was still spoken. There are some differences of opinion among Coptic language scholars on the correct phonetic interpretation of the writing system of Coptic. Differences centre on how to interpret the pairs of letters ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ . In the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek in the 5th century BC, the first member of each pair is a short closed vowel /e, o/ , and

8008-465: The neighboring port of Al-Hamra . The dam was built in 1902 and a hydroelectric plant was added in the 1980s. On 10 August 1947, a Coptic Catholic eparchy ( Eastern Catholic Diocese) of Assiut (or Lycopolis) was established on southern Egyptian territory split off from the Coptic Catholic Eparchy of Luqsor , each suffragan of Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria . Its episcopal see is

8112-421: The night and frost can easily form, while hail or snow are rare because of the low average of the city's precipitation and general low humidity . The highest record temperature was 51 °C (124 °F), recorded on July 23, 1994, while the lowest record temperature was −2 °C (28 °F), recorded on January 16, 2008. The Alexan Pasha Palace was constructed in 1910 as a riverside residence of

8216-548: The probable ancient pronunciations: Sahidic ϫ was probably pronounced [ tʲ ] and ϭ was probably pronounced [ kʲ ] . Reintges (2004 , p. 22) suggests that ϫ was pronounced [ tʃ ] . Beside being found in Greek loanwords, the letters ⟨φ, θ, χ⟩ were used in native words for a sequence of /p, t, k/ plus / h / , as in ⲑⲉ = ⲧ-ϩⲉ "the-way" (f.sg.) and ⲫⲟϥ = ⲡ-ϩⲟϥ "the-snake" (m.sg). The letters did not have this use in Bohairic, which used them for single sounds. It

8320-503: The quality of the surrounding vowels. / ʔ / is not indicated orthographically unless it follows a stressed vowel; then, it is marked by doubling the vowel letter (except in Bohairic): Akhmimic ⳉⲟⲟⲡ /xoʔp/ , Sahidic and Lycopolitan ϣⲟⲟⲡ šoʔp , Bohairic ϣⲟⲡ šoʔp 'to be' < ḫpr.w * /ˈχapraw/ 'has become'. The phoneme ⲃ / b / was probably pronounced as a fricative [ β ] , becoming ⲡ / p / after

8424-861: The reality" that the geographical location of Egypt is, of course, in Africa. While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, the exact phonetics is unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. In addition, because Egyptian is recorded over a full 2,000 years, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from Modern Italian , significant phonetic changes must have occurred during that lengthy time frame. Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants. Egyptian also contrasted voiceless and emphatic consonants, as with other Afroasiatic languages, but exactly how

8528-525: The renaissance. Efforts at language revitalisation continue to be undertaken, and have attracted the interest of Copts and linguists in and outside of Egypt. Coptic uses a writing system almost wholly derived from the Greek alphabet , with the addition of a number of letters that have their origins in Demotic Egyptian . This is comparable to the Latin-based Icelandic alphabet , which includes

8632-462: The rule of the Eleventh Dynasty ended with the victory of Thebes and the decline of Asyut's importance. Lycopolis has no remarkable ruins, but in the excavated chambers of the adjacent rocks mummies of wolves have been found, confirming the origin of its name, as well as a tradition preserved by Diodorus Siculus , to the effect that an Ethiopian army, invading Egypt, was repelled beyond

8736-400: The runic letter thorn . There is some variation in the number and forms of these signs depending on the dialect. Some of the letters in the Coptic alphabet that are of Greek origin were normally reserved for Greek words. Old Coptic texts used several graphemes that were not retained in the literary Coptic orthography of later centuries. In Sahidic, syllable boundaries may have been marked by

8840-599: The same graphemes are used for the pulmonic stops ( ⟨ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ ), the existence of the former may be inferred because the stops ⟨ ⲡ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ /p t c k/ are allophonically aspirated [pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ] before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants. In Bohairic, the allophones are written with the special graphemes ⟨ ⲫ ⲑ ϭ ⲭ ⟩ , but other dialects did not mark aspiration: Sahidic ⲡⲣⲏ , Bohairic ⲫⲣⲏ 'the sun'. Thus, Bohairic does not mark aspiration for reflexes of older *d ḏ g q : Sahidic and Bohairic ⲧⲁⲡ */dib/ 'horn'. Also,

8944-433: The script was supplanted by an early version of Coptic (about the third and fourth centuries), the system remained virtually unchanged. Even the number of signs used remained constant at about 700 for more than 2,000 years. Middle Egyptian was spoken for about 700 years, beginning around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent Second Intermediate Period . As the classical variant of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian

9048-512: The second member is a long open vowel /ɛː, ɔː/ . In some interpretations of Coptic phonology, it is assumed that the length difference is primary, with ⲉ/ⲏ /e, eː/ and ⲟ/ⲱ is /o, oː/ . Other scholars argue for a different analysis in which ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ are interpreted as /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ . These two charts show the two theories of Coptic vowel phonology: Dialects vary in their realisation. The difference between [ o ] and [ u ] seems to be allophonic. Evidence

9152-417: The southern Saidic dialect, the main classical dialect, and the northern Bohairic dialect, currently used in Coptic Church services. Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are written on stone in hieroglyphs . The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is zẖꜣ n mdw-nṯr ("writing of the gods' words"). In antiquity, most texts were written on the quite perishable medium of papyrus though

9256-553: The spoken language of the time, similar to the use of classical Middle Egyptian during the Ptolemaic Period. Coptic is the name given to the late Egyptian vernacular when it was written in a Greek-based alphabet, the Coptic alphabet; it flourished from the time of Early Christianity (c. 31/33–324) , but Egyptian phrases written in the Greek alphabet first appeared during the Hellenistic period c.  3rd century BC , with

9360-430: The subject is a pronoun, it normally is not also expressed independently, unless for emphasis. Asyut Asyut ( Arabic : أسيوط Asyūṭ  pronounced [ʔɑsˈjuːtˤ] , from Coptic : ⲥⲓⲟⲟⲩⲧ, ⲥⲓⲱⲟⲩⲧ Siōwt [sɪˈjo(ː)wt] ) is the capital of the modern Asyut Governorate in Egypt . It was built close to the ancient city of the same name, which is situated nearby. The modern city

9464-520: The suffix inflection survive in Coptic, mainly to indicate inalienable possession and in some verbs. Compare the Middle Egyptian form *satāpafa 'he chooses' (written stp.f in hieroglyphs) to Coptic (Sahidic) f.sotp ϥⲥⲱⲧⲡ̅ 'he chooses'. All Coptic nouns carry grammatical gender , either masculine or feminine, usually marked through a definite article as in the Romance languages , the difference

9568-429: The temple scriptoria. Old Coptic is represented mostly by non-Christian texts such as Egyptian pagan prayers and magical and astrological papyri. Many of them served as glosses to original hieratic and demotic equivalents. The glosses may have been aimed at non-Egyptian speakers. Under late Roman rule , Diocletian persecuted many Egyptian converts to the new Christian religion , which forced new converts to flee to

9672-467: The two sounds appear to be in free variation in Coptic, as they were since the Middle Egyptian period. However, they are contrasted only in Greek loans; for example, native Coptic ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃ ( anzēb ) and ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ ( ansēbə ) 'school' are homophonous. Other consonants that sometimes appear to be either in free variation or to have different distributions across dialects are [ t ] and [ d ] , [ ɾ ] and [ l ] (especially in

9776-399: The use of Coptic anywhere, whether in schools, public streets, and even homes, including mothers speaking to their children. Those who did not comply had their tongues cut off. He personally walked the streets of Cairo and eavesdropped on Coptic-speaking homes to find out if any family was speaking Coptic. As a written language, Coptic is thought to have completely given way to Arabic around

9880-644: The values given to those consonants by the neuere Komparatistik , instead connecting ⟨ꜥ⟩ with Semitic /ʕ/ and /ɣ/ . Both schools agree that Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨ꜣ⟩ , and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the written language was based, but it was preserved in other Egyptian varieties. They also agree that original */k g ḳ/ palatalise to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others. The Egyptian language has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to

9984-624: The western bank of the Nile . The two most prominent gods of ancient Egyptian Asyut were Anubis and Wepwawet , both funerary deities. During the First Intermediate Period , the rulers of " Zawty " ( Khety I , Tefibi , and Khety II ) were supporters of the Herakleopolitan kings, of whose domain the Nome formed the southern limits. The conflict between this Nome and the southern Nomes under

10088-413: The word ⲧⲃⲁⲓⲧⲱⲩ '(Who is) in (His) Mountain', is an epithet of Anubis . There are also traces of some archaic grammatical features, such as residues of the Demotic relative clause , lack of an indefinite article and possessive use of suffixes. Thus, the transition from the old traditions to the new Christian religion also contributed to the adoption of Greek words into the Coptic religious lexicon. It

10192-512: Was adapted from the Greek alphabet . The earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet are Greek transcriptions of Egyptian proper names, most of which date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom . Scholars frequently refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic. However, it is clear that by the Late Period of ancient Egypt , demotic scribes regularly employed a more phonetic orthography,

10296-557: Was adapted into Arabic as Babnouda , which remains a common name among Egyptian Copts to this day. It was also borrowed into Greek as the name Παφνούτιος ( Paphnutius ). That, in turn, is the source of the Russian name Пафнутий ( Pafnuty ), perhaps best known in the name of the mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev . The Egyptian language may have the longest documented history of any language, from Old Egyptian , which appeared just before 3200 BC, to its final phases as Coptic in

10400-412: Was also used in many texts to indicate the bilabial approximant / w / . Coptologists believe that Coptic ⲃ was articulated as a voiced bilabial fricative [ β ] . In the present-day Coptic Church services, this letter is realised as / v / , but it is almost certainly a result of the pronunciation reforms instituted in the 19th century. Whereas Old Egyptian contrasts / s / and / z / ,

10504-428: Was published by Adolf Erman in 1894, surpassed in 1927 by Alan Gardiner 's work. Middle Egyptian has been well-understood since then, although certain points of the verbal inflection remained open to revision until the mid-20th century, notably due to the contributions of Hans Jakob Polotsky . The Middle Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 14th century BC, giving rise to Late Egyptian. This transition

10608-473: Was recorded; or the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semitocentric approach; or, as G. W. Tsereteli suggests, Afroasiatic is a sprachbund , rather than a true genetic language family. The Egyptian language can be grouped thus: The Egyptian language is conventionally grouped into six major chronological divisions: Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using both

10712-515: Was taking place in the later period of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (known as the Amarna Period ). Original Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian texts were still used after the 14th century BCE. And an emulation of predominately Middle Egyptian, but also with characteristics of Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic, called " Égyptien de tradition " or "Neo-Middle Egyptian" by scholars,

10816-539: Was used as a literary language for new texts since the later New Kingdom in official and religious hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian or Demotic. Égyptien de tradition as a religious language survived until the Christianisation of Roman Egypt in the 4th century. Late Egyptian was spoken for about 650 years, beginning around 1350 BC, during the New Kingdom of Egypt . Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as

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