The Ancient Egyptian Language

First: The Origin of Writing in Ancient Egypt

In prehistoric times man passed through two fundamental civilisational stages: the gathering of food and the production of food. The first stage is the one in which man strove to gather his daily sustenance. He would go out for hunting on land, in the river or in the sea in the hope of catching an animal or a bird; he would also dig up the roots of wild plants and some leaves of trees in order to satisfy his hunger. During this long period of time man had to live his life moving from place to place, searching for shelter here and there, at a time when he had no clothing with which to cover his nakedness or to protect himself from the heat of summer and the cold of winter.

Although we cannot determine when the stage of food-gathering began, it is possible to know when this stage ended so that man might begin a new and important stage in his life, namely the stage of food-production. This stage ended with those enormous leaps that man achieved in his life, which consist of the domestication of animals, the kindling of fire and the knowledge of agriculture. These leaps secured stability for man: by domesticating animals he guaranteed a store of food, and he moved from eating raw meat to eating cooked meat after the discovery of fire – that discovery which enabled him to transform his vessels of clay into pottery, to enjoy warmth in the winter season, and to dispel the darkness of night.

The discovery of agriculture constituted the actual stability of man, who became linked to the inundation of the Nile, to an agricultural cycle, to the sowing of seeds and to the harvest. He established a dwelling for himself near his land, made clothes for himself from linen, formed a family for himself, and began to exchange interests with the neighbouring population settlements. This stability was sufficient to transfer man from the stage of food-gathering (which is the stage of material satisfaction) to the stage of intellectual, mental and artistic satisfaction, and to thinking about the creation of the universe and about what was happening around him. He began to think about the cosmic powers surrounding him, and he observed that the sun rises then sets then rises again; that the moon shines then disappears then shines again; that the plant grows then is harvested then grows again; and that the Nile floods then recedes then floods again.

This cycle of the sun, the moon, the plant and the Nile is what inspired him with the absolute conviction of life after death – meaning that he lives for a temporary period then is resurrected again for all eternity. Thus the Egyptian believed in the essence and the centre of gravity of Egyptian civilisation, and he placed it in a position of leadership. It was Egypt's good fortune that the Egyptian man was prepared to deal with nature and interact with it in order to accomplish for us this splendid civilisation, whose remains we see everywhere on the land of Egypt.

In the shadow of stability man began to take his first steps with confidence and firmness towards art. He began to form from soft materials such as clay statues of the creatures in nature that occupied him in his daily life in his agriculture, hunting and herding. He began to record on the rocks some scenes that represent his various activities and express his continuous attempts to understand the anatomical elements of man, animal, bird and reptiles, as well as certain features existing in nature such as water, the desert, the mountains, etc. This was within the framework of what we know as petroglyphs, which are an intermediate stage between relief and painting, through which man tried to express in forms without proportions what was happening around him in the universe.

When his daily activities multiplied and the population settlements increased, man had to adopt a fixed means that would enable him to express ideas and to record the events of his daily life.

There is no doubt that for a long period man continued to deal with temporary means for expressing an idea, the most prominent of which was perhaps the use of mutual signs to achieve understanding among individuals.

A sign made by using the members of the human body, or by using auxiliary factors, may convey the idea at its moment, then the idea ends with the ending of the use of the sign. Man must have realised at some point that the sign cannot fulfil everything he wishes to express: many of the beautiful meanings, values and principles, as well as transactions, cannot be expressed by a sign. Then, when man took wide steps in the field of religious beliefs and civil and military activities, he realised that certain events had to be recorded. Among the simplest of these is that his belief in life after death made him strive to preserve the body so that the spirit might recognise it and dwell in it. Among the means of preserving the body and guaranteeing the immortality of man was his personal name, which had to be recorded on the walls of his tomb, on his statue, on his funerary furniture and the like.

From this point the Egyptian succeeded, after enormous effort, in achieving this tremendous goal (the fixed means of expressing the idea), namely writing, which transferred him from the stage of prehistoric times to the historical periods – that is, writing is the dividing line between prehistoric times and the historical periods that Egypt began with the First Dynasty, on the grounds that writing is the material for recording history and the civilisation of ancient Egyptian man.

Central Historical Point: Writing is the dividing line between prehistoric times and the historical periods that Egypt began with the First Dynasty, on the grounds that writing is the material for recording history and the civilisation of ancient Egyptian man.

The invention of writing came as an expression of material and moral stability, and as an expression of the fact that this man was prepared before others to rise by means of this outstanding step on the path of his pioneering civilisation. It is also an expression of the fact that the environment in which ancient Egyptian man lived helped to achieve stability for him – that stability which produced many creations. The climate that was suitable and stable to a large extent, the level land in most parts of the country, and the Nile, the artery of life that linked the country from one end to the other and brought the country every good and prosperity – all these factors and others drove ancient Egyptian man to invest all the resources in order to raise up his country and achieve the aims he sought.

We do not know precisely when ancient Egyptian man achieved this accomplishment, namely "the invention of writing," although we know that the First Dynasty (around the thirty-first century BC) represents the first building-blocks in the structure of ancient Egyptian civilisation, and that it witnessed serious attempts at hieroglyphic writing.

Yet we see that the attempts of the Egyptian man at writing began about two centuries before the dynasty. Some evidence from the late Neolithic period and the Predynastic and Proto-Dynastic periods points to this, when the Egyptian – inspired by nature – tried to record some pictorial signs and some simple words.

Before we speak about the oldest writings of the ancient Egyptian language, namely the writing known as "hieroglyphic," we should refer to the name of the language that embraced this writing and the other writings that will be mentioned later.

The Egyptians in their texts referred to their language by many designations, among them: "the tongue of Egypt," "the mouth of Egypt," "the speech of Egypt" and "the speech of the people of Egypt." It was also known as "the speech of the god."

This language was written in four scripts: hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic and Coptic, which we shall discuss later. The ancient Egyptian language is characterised by a distinctive personality that is a continuation of the distinction of Egypt as land and people. This linguistic distinction is represented in its retention of principles of grammar and morphology by which it differed from other languages of the ancient world. Despite this distinction, and because Egypt was, civilisationally and geographically, a member of the body of the ancient Near East and had varying connections with the islands of the Mediterranean and North Africa, and by virtue of the civilisational openness resulting from commercial or military relations of Egypt with her neighbours, the ancient Egyptian language had to enter the circle of mutual influence. Consequently it contained rules and vocabulary that point to the existence of strong relations with Egypt's neighbours from the Semitic group in the north-east and from the Hamitic group in the west and in the south and south-east.

This is not the place to investigate the origins of the ancient Egyptian language and whether it is of Hamitic or Semitic origin. The ancient Egyptian language, as we have already said, has its own distinctive personality that springs from the personality of the Egyptian man and the soil of his land. But like every language it was inevitable that rapprochement and interaction should occur between it and other languages of the neighbouring peoples. It does not diminish this language or that if it takes from others what may enrich it and achieve completeness for it, so long as it retains its original characteristics. Because when the ancient Egyptian language is mentioned the hieroglyphic script must be mentioned with it as the oldest of its scripts, the longest-lived, the clearest and the most enduring – it is the writing of the complete signs and of the massive constructions such as the temples and the tombs – we shall therefore begin the discussion with this writing.

Second: Hieroglyphic Writing

Writing is defined – as we have mentioned – as the fixed means of expressing an idea. When the Egyptian thought of recording his events, nature around him was the source of inspiration for him with what it contained of natural phenomena and living creatures. This guided his thought towards transferring some of what was in nature and the surrounding environment in order to express meanings by means of pictures.

The signs came with a pictorial use, that is, expressing their own image. If he drew a human being, he intended to express the human being; the same applied to the members of the human body, or the animal and its members, as well as birds, reptiles and insects; then there are the trees, plants, mountains, seas and rivers.

It is to be expected that some of the people of initiative, whom time produces in every place, met and put forward a conception open to discussion and development. They must have agreed on the use of certain signs to express a particular content: the owl to express the owl itself, and a wave of water to express water in general, whether with regard to the source or the use. They chose a particular geometric form to express "the house," and another circular form with two intersecting streets to express the city. The sign that represents the heart and the windpipe was used to express them as parts of the human body. In all these pictorial signs it was necessary in most cases to use a vertical stroke beneath the sign in order to confirm that the sign expresses itself and points to its content – that is, it depicts itself without having a phonetic value.

The circle of agreement on the pictorial use of the sign must have begun to expand to include more than one place on the land of Egypt. The reader will perhaps ask: from which place did the Egyptian begin to write? Did the attempt begin in a particular place and then gradually move to other places? Or did it start from more than one place at the same time?

The more probable and logical view is that the beginning took place in a particular place, and after some of the fundamentals had been reached the idea began to move to other regions which perhaps accepted the leadership of the region in which writing began, or in which they worked out their own thought.

If the point of departure occurred in a particular place, is it possible, on the basis of what we know about the history of ancient Egypt and its civilisation, and about the roles played by certain regions that represent a religious or intellectual weight – is it possible for us to determine where writing began? We may be able to point to certain regions in the north of the country, its middle and its south that possessed intellectual weight throughout ancient Egyptian history, or in a specific period of it. There is the city of knowledge, culture and religious thought, "Heliopolis" (Ain Shams – El-Matariya), which was known as "On," the centre of the worship of the sun and the source of an important theory among the theories of the ancient Egyptian's conception of the creation of the universe – "the theory of the Ennead" – and a place of attraction for philosophers and men of science from the land of Greece.

There is the city of Memphis, the oldest of the Egyptian capitals (present-day Mit Rahina – centre of El-Badrashin – Giza Governorate), the centre of the worship of the god Ptah, one of the most important Egyptian gods, and the source of one of the theories of the creation of the universe. Then there is in Middle Egypt, in Minya Governorate, and more precisely the village of El-Ashmunein, centre of Mallawi. El-Ashmunein was the centre of the worship of the god Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge, and from it also issued one of the theories of the creation of the universe – "the theory of the Ogdoad." Then there is in Upper Egypt, in the region of Abydos (El-Araba el-Madfuna – centre of El-Balyana – Sohag Governorate), where the principal centre of the worship of the god of goodness and the lord of the underworld, "Osiris," is located. Also in Sohag is the region of Thinis (This), which is thought to be the village of El-Birba (centre of Girga – Sohag Governorate), from which King Narmer and his family went out to unify the Two Lands of Egypt. About 20 km north of Edfu we find on the east and west of the Nile the two cities of "Nekheb" and "Nekhen," the capitals of the South before the unification of the Two Lands of Egypt, and the centre of the worship of the goddess of great importance in Egyptian beliefs (the goddess "Nekhbet"). Returning to the north of the country, to the village of Buto (El-Buto – Tell el-Fara'in – centre of Desouk – Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate), the capital of Egypt before the unification of the Two Lands, and the centre of the worship of one of the prominent goddesses in ancient Egypt (namely the goddess "Wadjet").

Then there are many sites that witnessed the civilisations of prehistory and that prepared the way for the written history of Egypt, such as Helwan, Maadi, Gerzeh, the Fayum, El-Badari, Deir Tasa, Naqada and others.

In which of these places, or perhaps in others, did Egyptian writing begin? This is a question that will remain without a definite answer until the land of Egypt yields up the great deal that still lies in its bosom.

We return to the pictorial signs which the Egyptian realised, with the passage of time, were insufficient for expressing his ideas, his activities and his conceptions of the upper and lower worlds (the world of the living and the world of the dead). Accordingly the Egyptian began to develop the use of the sign so that its pictorial role gradually diminished and its phonetic role began, each sign giving one sound, or two, or three, and in a few cases four and five.

1 – The Phonetic Value of the Signs

After the Egyptian had arrived at assigning a phonetic value to each sign, he had to classify the signs into signs that give the phonetic value of a single letter, which were known, by extension, as "the alphabet"; others that give the phonetic value of two letters; a third group that give the phonetic value of three letters; and cases that are not numerous of four and five.

We can imagine the extent of the difficulties that faced a group of the ancient Egyptian pioneers who undertook to accomplish this splendid work with regard to classification and the determination of the phonetic value, and with regard to the possibility of spreading this accomplishment throughout the whole of the Egyptian lands in order to unify the means of understanding in speech and writing; then with regard to the number of signs whose process of selection took a long time and required great effort until the Egyptian was able to achieve the best possible form of linguistic and written completeness, and to ensure that the signs that had been chosen would fulfil all his requirements in his worldly and otherworldly life.

There is no doubt that this multiplicity of the phonetic value of the signs led to the total of these signs amounting to hundreds – a matter that represents an extreme difficulty for those who wish to learn the ancient Egyptian language when it is compared with ancient and modern languages that base their writing systems on a limited group of letters known as the alphabet.

Among the signs of a single letter, for example, is "the vulture bird," which corresponds to the letter "aleph." Among the signs of two phonetic values is the sign that symbolises the house, *pr*. Among the signs of three sounds is the sign that depicts the heart and the windpipe, *nfr*.

Before we speak about the ancient Egyptian language with regard to the types of scripts in which it was written, the linguistic stages through which it passed, the directions of writing and other matters, we should like to throw light on the story of the decipherment of the symbols of the ancient Egyptian language.

Summary of Religious and Intellectual Centres in Ancient Egypt

City / Region	Modern Location	Deity / God	Significance
Heliopolis (On)	Ain Shams – El-Matariya	Sun god	Centre of worship; source of the theory of the Ennead.
Memphis	Mit Rahina – El-Badrashin – Giza	Ptah	Oldest Egyptian capital; source of a theory of creation.
El-Ashmunein	Mallawi – Minya	Thoth	God of wisdom and knowledge; source of the theory of the Ogdoad.
Abydos	El-Araba el-Madfuna – El-Balyana – Sohag	Osiris	Principal centre of worship of the lord of the underworld.
Thinis (This)	El-Birba – Girga – Sohag	—	Origin of King Narmer who unified the Two Lands.
Nekheb & Nekhen	North of Edfu	Nekhbet	Capitals of the South before unification.
Buto	Tell el-Fara'in – Desouk – Kafr el-Sheikh	Wadjet	Capital of Egypt before unification; prominent goddess.

Module Key Takeaways

Writing emerged from stability: The invention of writing in ancient Egypt was a direct result of the agricultural stability along the Nile, marking the decisive transition from prehistoric times to recorded history with the First Dynasty.
Hieroglyphic evolution: Hieroglyphic writing began as pictorial signs directly representing objects, then developed into a sophisticated phonetic system where signs could represent one, two, three, or more sounds.
Decipherment unlocks civilisation: Understanding the ancient Egyptian language through its four scripts — hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Coptic — is the key to accessing the full record of one of the world's most enduring and influential civilisations.