THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN & COPTIC LANGUAGES
-Ancient Egyptian Language-
The Two Systems
The Written Language System:
The Hieroglyphics, Hieratic, and Demotic are considered written language
because they were written with consonants and semi-consonants and did
not include any kind of nunnation, which is contrary to Hebrew and Arabic.
Both of these latter two languages contain nunnation, symbols that should
be located above and below the letters. Such symbols represent the vowels
and could assist in reading Hebrew and Arabic texts correctly although
most of their alphabets are considered consonants. The ancient Egyptians
did not invent such nunnation. Thus, the pronunciation of the ancient
Egyptian language disappeared gradually after the Byzantine Empire.
But during the Roman Empire in the third century A.D., the Egyptians
started to write their language with the 24 Greek letters in addition
to 7 letters from Demotic. They wrote using these 31 letters, ignoring
the approximately 720 symbols employed by their ancestors. By doing
this, they preserved the pronunciation of their language and giving
us Coptic.
The Spoken Language System:
Some scholars hold that the ancient Egyptians had another
language in addition to the written form. Father Shenouda
Maher summarized the opinion of Chain concerning the
popular national language of ancient Egypt, . . . in
which he emphasizes that the Egyptian and Coptic languages
have been together simultaneously since olden times.
Chain has presented a copious and detailed study and
has indicated that the Egyptian language is not a spoken
language is so far as it is basically derived from Coptic,
assuming that Coptic is the origin, and that the Egyptian
language was used by the priests and the scribes in their
written work only.
This means that the Egyptian language is the language
of the Egyptian who spoke in Coptic and who used this
language for scriptural purposes only. This Egyptian
language was only known to scribes and totally unknown
to the public.19
The two systems could be explained by assuming all Egyptian since very ancient
times spoke one language, but this language took a different form when used in
writing. The oral language was colloquial and used by the common people. Although
the spoken language developed over time, it was not written during the rule of
the pharaohs. As noted earlier, it was finally written in the third century A.
D., utilizing the 31 letters from Greek and Demotic. Utilizing all of these letters
allowed for the correct pronunciation of the written language, primarily because
the ancient Egyptian did not include vowels.20
In any case, the Coptic language “is, at base, a dialect of Ancient Egyptian;
many of the nouns and verbs found in the Hieroglyphic texts remain unchanged
in Coptic, and a large number of others can, by making proper allowance for phonetic
decay and dialectic differences, be identified without difficulty.”21