THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN & COPTIC LANGUAGES

-The Origin of the Coptic Language-

By Dr. Boulos Ayad Ayad

The Different Writing:

The ancient Egyptians considered their language sacred, taught to them by the God Thoth. For this reason, the language lasted about 4,000 years with some changes from one period to the next. Even the number of signs remained the same through the history of ancient Egypt, and the syllables and signs of Hieroglyphics remained likewise the same. Before Dynasty XI until Dynastic XXV, they used abbreviated writing, which is called Hieratic. After this period, Hieratic became abnormal Hieratic; it was then abbreviated and become more cursive, which scholars consider the Demotic writing.9 When the Greeks saw the Hieroglyphic writing form, they gave it the name “hieroglyphika grammata,” which was derived from “hieros” (“holy”) and “glyphein” (“to carve”). “Grammata” means “letters”; thus, the entire meaning was “sacred carved letters.”10

Hieroglyphic:

The Egyptians began to use their hieroglyphics writing during Dynasty I (about 3200 B.C.) — or probably not long before the First Dynasty — until August 24, 394 A.D.
Hieroglyphics has its own system of writing, being written from left to right, right to left, or from top to bottom. This system agrees with the “Boustrophedon” theory11 that, when a bull ploughed the land, he started from left to right or from the right to left and went from one row to the next from the top to the bottom. When the ancient Egyptian noticed this, he used the same method in his writing. This system was adopted by other nations as well.
On the walls of various monuments can be seen ancient Egyptian inscriptions without any spaces, punctuation, or special signs. Moreover, ancient Egyptians never wrote in separate sentences.

Hieratic:

Before the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians abbreviated their syllables and the Greeks gave it the name of “hieratikos,” meaning “sacred or priestly.”12 It is now know as Hieratic, “Because in the Greco-Roman age it was the usual script employed by the priests . . .And in the latest period, as already said, Hieratic was generally employed by the priests when writing religious texts on papyrus.”13
The direction of the hieratic writing was from right to left but during the Middle Kingdom, Hieratic was often written in vertical columns. Gradually, it also came to be written horizontally.
Hieratic was used for writing on papyrus and on wooden sarcophagi. Thus, it was employed for the purposes of administration, legal documents, religious and magical texts, private and official letters, instructions and educational morals, stories and literature, accounts, inventories, lists, and scientific books.
Many of the hieratic texts found in the desert on stelae and rocks, considered graffiti writing, were left by travelers or those working the mines and quarries. Writing Hieratic on stone became widespread among the Egyptians, especially toward the end of the New Kingdom and Dynasty XXII, which was established by Libyan mercenaries.14
Around the eighth century B.C., Hieratic became a more cursive script, called “abnormal Hieratic,” after which Demotic writing appeared.15

Demotic:

The third script used by the ancient Egyptians was Demotic, which was named from the Greek word “demotikos,” meaning “common.”16 Its use began about 715 B.C. and continued until around 470 to 476 A.D., from Dynasty XXV to late Roman times.17 We have many papyri written in Demotic script, including different forms of legal documents dealing with marriage, divorce, buy, selling, slavery, and inheritance, administrative documents, stories, literature, texts of wisdom, prophesies, and magical and funeral texts.
In the last phase of the ancient Egyptian language, the Demotic became group writing, meaning that one word was written in four or five syllables and the scholars transliterated them into one or two letters. Thus, the language became complicated and, with the presence of the Greeks in the ancient Middle East, their language became widespread during the Ptolemaic period. The Ptolemy employed the Greek language in administration and soon it became the official language of the rulers. During this period, the Egyptians were using Demotic as their native language with Greek being the official language. At the same time, many Greek words found their way into Demotic writings. And “none of these styles of writing (Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Coptic) utterly banished the others, but each as it arose restricted the domain of its progenitor. In the Greco-Roman period all these were in use contemporaneously.”18