CHAPTER 2 Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology

22 Pages·2007·2.55 MB·English

ITTC02 1/25/07 5:32 PM Page 23
Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology 23
CHAPTER 2
Hieroglyphs, Language, and
Pharaonic Chronology
Contents
2.1 Language of the Ancient Egyptians
2.2 Origins and Development of Egyptian Writing
2.3 Scripts and Media of Writing
2.4 Signs, Structure, and Grammar
2.5 Literacy in Ancient Egypt
2.6 Textual Studies
2.7 Use of Texts in Egyptian Archaeology
2.8 Historical Outline of Pharaonic Egypt
2.9 The Egyptian Civil Calendar, King Lists, and Calculation
of Pharaonic Chronology
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 24
Introduction
Although only a small proportion of people learned to read and write
in ancient Egypt, the society was a literate one. The writing system was
deciphered beginning in 1822, and knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs
opened up a previously inaccessible world of ancient beliefs and ideas.
Surviving texts in hieroglyphs and cursive scripts greatly expand our
knowledge of this early civilization. Some Egyptian texts are even
informative about the thoughts and feelings of individuals – not only
kings and elites, but also persons of lower status. Texts amplify, and
sometimes contrast with, the archaeological evidence. The two forms
of evidence complement each other and provide a fuller view of the ancient
culture.
Texts are also an important source of information concerning over
3,000 years of Egyptian chronology. Historians have calculated lengths
of reign from texts of king lists. When royal names appear in archae-
ological contexts, the associated evidence can be dated to specific reigns.
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 25
Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology 25
2.1 Language of the Ancient Egyptians
The ancient Egyptians spoke a language which is now called Egyptian. No one
knows the correct pronunciation of this language, which in any event changed greatly
over the course of several thousand years (as did the written language), and there were
probably regional dialects and variations in pronunciation as well. The language is known
only through its various written forms, the most formal of which is the pictorial script
called hieroglyphic. The Greek word “hieroglyph” literally means “sacred writing,” an
appropriate term for a writing system that was used on the walls of temples and tombs,
and which the Egyptians themselves called the “god’s words.”
Linguists classify languages by placing them in families of related languages, such
as the Indo-European family, which includes English and many European and Asian
languages. Ancient Egyptian is a branch of the language family called Afro-Asiatic
(also known as “Hamito-Semitic”). Ancient languages of the Afro-Asiatic family, such
as Egyptian, are known only from preserved written texts, whereas many Afro-Asiatic
languages spoken in northern and eastern Africa and recorded in recent times have no
earlier written form.
The Semitic languages form the most widely spoken branch of the Afro-Asiatic
languages, and include ancient languages such as Akkadian (an “East Semitic” language
spoken and written in ancient Mesopotamia, in a script called cuneiform, which means
“wedge-shaped writing”), and Hebrew (one of the “Northwest Semitic” languages of
Syria and Palestine, of the 1st millennium bc). Semitic languages spoken today include
Arabic and Hebrew, as well as several languages of central and northern Ethiopia and
Eritrea.
Other branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family include Cushitic, Berber, Chadic,
and Omotic. These names relate to peoples and regions in Africa where these languages
are spoken. Berber and Cushitic are geographically closest to Egypt. One of the Cushitic
languages is Beja, which is spoken by nomadic peoples in the Eastern Desert, and has
some close analogies to Egyptian.
2.2 Origins and Development of Egyptian Writing
Although Egyptian was certainly one of the languages spoken in the lower Nile
Valley in prehistoric times, the first writing of the language did not appear until about
3200 bc. The earliest known hieroglyphs appear at the same time that a large state
was consolidated and controlled by the first Egyptian kings. From the beginning
the writing system had a royal context, and this is probably the setting in which
writing was invented in Egypt. It used to be proposed that writing was first invented
in Mesopotamia and then the idea of writing diffused to Egypt. The structure,
scripts, media, and uses of the two writing systems, however, are very different, and
it seems more likely that writing was invented independently in both Egypt and
Mesopotamia.
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 26
26 Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology
BC 1 2 3 4 5
3000
Early Dynastic
Period Archaic
(Dyns I–II) Egyptian
2500
Old Kingdom
Old
(Dyns III–VIII)
Egyptian
First Int. Period
2000
(Dyns IX–X)
Middle
Middle Kingdom Egyptian
(Dyns XI–XII)
Second Int. Period
(Dyns XIII–XVII)
1500
New Kingdom
(Dyns XVIII–XX) Late
Egyptian
1000 Traditional
Third Int. Period Middle
(Dyns XXI–XXIV) Egyptian
Late Period 500
(Dyns XXV–XXX)
Demotic
Greek Period
AD
Roman Period
500
Coptic
Arab Period
1000
1500
Figure 2.1 Stages of the Egyptian language. Source: Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: Linguistic
Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 8. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge
University Press
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 27
Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology 27
In use for over 3,000 years during pharaonic and Greco-Roman times, spoken
Egyptian changed through time (see Figure 2.1). These changes are reflected to some
extent in the written language (see Figure 2.2). Early Egyptian is the earliest, formative
stage of writing and dates to Dynasty 0 and the first three dynasties. The earliest
hieroglyphs are found on artifacts from tombs: royal labels that were probably attached
to grave goods, royal seals, and labels of high state officials. Hieroglyphs are also
found on early royal ceremonial art, the most famous of which is the Narmer Palette
(see Figure 5.5). The use of these signs was not standardized. Writing at this time was
used to record words as items of information – rather than consecutive speech, with
verbal sentences, syntax, etc., and the earliest writing remains incompletely understood
because there simply is not enough material.
Many more texts are known from the Old Kingdom (4th–6th Dynasties), in a
form of the written language known as Old Egyptian. In combination with scenes,
hieroglyphic texts appear on the walls of tombs of private individuals, and in the later
Old Kingdom, the earliest royal mortuary texts, known as the Pyramid Texts, are
found in the inner chambers of pyramids. Full syntax was being written down at
this time.
Middle Egyptian (also known as Classical Egyptian) is the written language of the
Middle Kingdom (later 11thand 12th–13thDynasties) and Second Intermediate Period.
This is the classical period of ancient Egyptian literature, when literary texts such as
the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailorand the Story of Sinuhewere composed. Instructional
texts in mathematics, medicine, and veterinary practice are known, as well as letters, legal
documents, and government records. Religious texts were written in Middle Egyptian,
not only in the Middle Kingdom, but also in later periods. Developing as part of the
same large corpus as the late Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, mortuary texts for private
individuals were painted or incised on the sides of Middle Kingdom coffins, hence the
term Coffin Texts. New Kingdom mortuary texts are also mainly in Middle Egyptian,
including the so-called Book of the Dead (more correctly known as the Going Forth
by Day) and the underworld books found on the walls of royal tombs. Around 700 dif-
ferent hieroglyphic signs were used to write Middle Egyptian (but no one text would
ever be written with so many different signs).
Late Egyptian is the written language of the later New Kingdom (19th–20thDynasties)
and Third Intermediate Period. Although it had been spoken for a long time, Late Egyptian
did not appear as a fully written language until later in the 18th Dynasty, during the
reign of Akhenaten. The huge body of monumental texts on the walls of New Kingdom
temples continued to be written in a form of Middle Egyptian. Numerous surviving
government records include the account of a workers’ strike, and many types of texts
known earlier, such as literary works, letters, and medical and magical texts, are written
in Late Egyptian.
Demotic is the written language (as well as a script) associated with the Late Period,
beginning with the 26th Dynasty (664–525 bc), and it continued to be in use through
Greco-Roman times. A large body of Demotic literature is known, especially narrative
and instruction texts. The latest known use of Demotic is from a graffito at the temple
of Philae, dating to ad452.
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 28
28 Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology
Figure 2.2 Limestone ostracon, with Coptic inscriptions on both sides, addressed to Psan, probably the
disciple of Epiphanius, and naming Pesentius of Coptos/Qift. © Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
University College London UC62848
The latest (and last) form of the ancient Egyptian language is Coptic, which began
to be written in the 2ndcentury ad (see Figure 2.2). Since hieroglyphs were associated
with pagan temples and practices in Egypt, Egyptian-speaking Christians wrote in Coptic,
using the Coptic alphabet, which was derived from the Greek alphabet, with the addi-
tion of a few letters derived from Demotic. The last hieroglyphs are from the late 4th
century ad, after which knowledge of this ancient writing system was lost. Gradually
after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7thcentury, Arabic began to replace Coptic
as the spoken and written language. Coptic continues to be used as the liturgical
language of the Egyptian Coptic Church.
2.3 Scripts and Media of Writing
Ancient Egyptian was written in different scripts, depending on the media and the time
period. Hieroglyphs are the pictographic signs that appeared from the earliest times
when writing was invented in Egypt. Hieroglyphic signs never became abstract and were
the most formal script, of symbolic importance for all monumental texts, both religious
and mortuary. Hieroglyphic texts were carved on the walls, ceilings, and columns of
stone temples, and on many types of artifacts. They were also painted or carved on the
walls of tombs, and were used to record many religious texts on papyrus.
At the same time that early hieroglyphs were used, a more cursive and informal script
now called hieratic developed. Written in ink and not carved, hieratic was easier to write
than the pictographic hieroglyphs, and is a more abstracted form of these signs (see
Figure 2.3). Both hieratic and cursive hieroglyphs were used to write texts on papyrus.
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 29
Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology 29
Figure 2.3 Fragmentary papyrus in hieratic about the Battle of Qadesh, fought by Rameses II in the
19thDynasty (E. 4892). The Art Archive/Musée du Louvre Paris/Dagli Orti
Records were also written in hieratic on ostraca, broken pieces of pottery or fragments
of limestone. Plastered wooden boards were another writing medium, and adminis-
trative letters with hieroglyphs written vertically on clay tablets, using a bone stylus,
have been excavated in the late Old Kingdom governor’s palace at Balat, in Dakhla Oasis
(see 6.12).
The demotic script, which developed in the 1st millennium bc, was a more cursive
form of writing than hieratic. It contains many abbreviations, and has to be read in
word groups more than individual signs. The middle text on the famous Rosetta Stone
is in demotic, with a hieroglyphic text at the top and Greek at the bottom (see Figure 1.1).
2.4 Signs, Structure, and Grammar
With hundreds of signs in use, Egyptian script is much more complex than alphabets,
which were not invented in the Near East until the 2nd millennium bc. Egyptian was
first written vertically, and horizontal writing did not become the norm until the Middle
Kingdom. Signs faced the direction from which they were read, usually from right to
left. The script was written with no punctuation between clauses and sentences, and
no spacing between words. The system does not write vowels, making it very difficult
to reconstruct pronunciation, which is done primarily by working back from Coptic,
in which vowels are written.
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 30
30 Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology
The use of different classes of hieroglyphic or hieratic signs in the same word
made the decipherment of Egyptian much more difficult than it would have been
for an alphabetic system. The simplest type of hieroglyphic sign is a logogram, with
one sign representing a word, such as the sign representing the word for “sun.”
Some signs (phonograms), many derived from logograms, were used phonetically
to represent sounds in the spoken language, with one hieroglyph representing one,
two, or three consonants (uniconsonantal, biconsonantal, or triconsonantal signs).
Several uniconsonantal signs, , represent the so-called weak consonants,
which were often omitted in writing. Although both biconsonantal and triconsonantal
signs appear alone, they are often accompanied by one or two uniconsonantal signs,
used as phonetic complements, so that the signs are not to be confused with logo-
graphic ones.
Determinative signs have no phonetic value and are placed at the end of a word, to
graphically convey the general meaning of that word. For example, the determinative
sign depicts a woman giving birth. It is placed at the end of the verb ms ,
“to give birth.”
There are also numerical signs in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which number from one ( )
to 1,000,000 ( ).
The basic word structure of a sentence in Egyptian is: (1) verb, (2) subject (noun
or pronoun), (3) direct object. In gender nouns are masculine or feminine, and in
number they are singular, dual (for pairs, such as “two hands”), or plural. Adjectives
follow the noun and agree in gender and number.
Egyptian verbal sentences can be compound and/or complex, with subordinate
clauses, and there are numerous verb forms. There are also non-verbal sentences, in
which the sentence structure itself links subject and predicate. Written continuously
with no spaces between words or punctuation, individual sentences in texts can only
be parsed by applying the rules of grammar. The ancient Egyptian language cannot be
described in detail here, and more specific information about its structure can be found
in the list of suggested readings.
In the process of translating Egyptian texts, Egyptologists often first transliterate
the hieroglyphs or hieratic signs into letters of the Latin/Roman alphabet with spaces
left between words. Diacritical marks are used for several consonants with a greater
range of phonetic values than exist in European languages and a couple of special signs
for consonants that those languages do not possess. The text is then translated into English
or another language, which is accomplished with knowledge of the grammar of the
form of the language in which the text was written. Even with such knowledge,
ancient Egypt is a culture far removed in space and time from the modern world, and
concepts expressed in Egyptian texts can remain obscure in meaning, especially in
religious and mortuary texts.
Because of the complexities of the language and scripts – as well as the damaged
condition of many texts – several years’ training are required to attain full proficiency
in ancient Egyptian. Many Egyptologists are full-time specialists in philology, and
archaeologists of pharaonic period sites who do not have extensive training in philology
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 31
Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology 31
Box 2-A Hieroglyphic signs
Uniconsonantal signs
ms
n
nb
i
kn
y
Examples of triconsonantal signs
y
‘ anp
w ppr
b nfr
p ntr
f ndm
m
Examples of phonetic complements
n
mn “to establish”
r
ppr “to come into existence/being”
h
nfr “beautiful”
o
anp “life”
p
Examples of the use of determinative signs
h
ra “sun”
s
pr “to go”
s
S ssmt “horse”
l
Examples of masculine nouns
k
sn “brother”
g
pr “house”
t
t Examples of feminine nouns
d snt “sister”
d nht “tree”
Examples of biconsonantal signs Examples of dual nouns
wr snwy “two brothers”
mn snty “two sisters”
ITTC02 1/25/07 2:54 PM Page 32
32 Hieroglyphs, Language, and Pharaonic Chronology
need to work with such specialists. It is useful for all specialists of pharaonic Egypt
to have some competence in the language – for a better understanding of the textual
evidence and what the texts reveal about the culture.
2.5 Literacy in Ancient Egypt
Most people in ancient Egypt did not know how to read and write. Since the majority
of Egyptians were peasant farmers, they would not have needed to learn to read, and
the complexities of the written language would have made it more difficult to learn
than most alphabetic writing systems. Although some members of the royal family and
high status individuals, as well as officials, priests, and army officers were literate, scribes
were needed for operations of the state at all levels.
Egyptian scribes were professionals trained in special schools in royal administrative
departments and temples. Some scribes probably learned through apprenticeship, such
as is known from the New Kingdom workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina. Model
letters recorded by school boys, on limestone ostraca and plaster-covered wooden boards,
have been found which give us information about what was taught in these schools or
to apprentices in jobs. A well-known Middle Egyptian text attributed to the scribe Khety
extols the virtues of being a scribe, who will always have employment. He boasts that
scribes do not have to wear rough garments like common laborers, and they can take
baths. Scribes give orders and others have to obey them.
Scribes were needed for the bureaucratic functions of all branches of the government
and administration, including issuing the rations for government personnel and workers
who depended on state resources for their livelihood. Tax collection and operations of
the treasury needed to be recorded, as did organizing and supplying the personnel for
expeditions outside of Egypt – for mining and quarrying, trade, and warfare. Scribes
were also used for large-scale state work projects such as pyramid building.
Probably the most visible evidence of writing in ancient Egypt are the hieroglyphic
texts found on the walls of temples and tombs, both royal and private. These were
the work of artisans who worked with scribes and/or literate artisans. Religious and
mortuary texts were written and read by scribally trained priests, and scribes were needed
for the construction and operation of temples. Legal proceedings, both local and national,
were recorded by scribes. Wealthy private individuals needed scribes to administer their
estates and to record documents such as wills and business transactions.
2.6 Textual Studies
The decipherment of Egyptian opened the way to recovering an understanding of
the Egyptian language in all of its stages and scripts. An enormous undertaking
(which continues in the present) was to record texts of all types for study. After the early
19th-century expeditions, Egyptologists such as Auguste Mariette, Heinrich Brugsch,
Émile Chassinat, and Johannes Dümichen continued to record and publish Egyptian