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Late Egyptian
 
 
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Late Egyptian is the stage of the Egyptian language
Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
 that began to be written in the New Kingdom
New Kingdom

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian History of Ancient Egypt between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, and Twentieth dynasty of Egypt....
 around the Amarna period
Amarna

The site of Amarna is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of Minya Governorate, some 58 km south of the city of al-Minya, 312 km south of the Egyptian capital Cairo and 402 km north of Luxor....
. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Ramesside Period and later.
Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature
Ancient Egyptian literature

Ancient Egyptian literature comprises texts written in the Egyptian language during the History of ancient Egypt of Egypt. Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs....
, comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun
Story of Wenamun

The Story of Wenamun is a Literature text written in hieratic in the Egyptian language language. It is only known from one incomplete copy discovered in 1890 at al-Hibah, Egypt, and subsequently purchased in 1891 in Cairo by the Russian Egyptologist Vladimir Goleni?cev ....
, the love poems of the Chester-Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Ani
Papyrus of Ani

The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript written in cursive hieroglyphs and illustrated with color miniatures created in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of History of ancient Egypt, ....
. Instructions
Sebayt

Sebayt is the ancient Egyptian term for a genre of Ancient Egyptian literature. The word literally means 'teachings' or 'instructions' and refers to formally written ethical teachings focused on the "way of living truly"....
 became a popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior.






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Late Egyptian is the stage of the Egyptian language
Egyptian language

Egyptian is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family along with the Chadic languages, Berber languages, Semitic languages, Cushitic languages and possibly Omotic languages languages....
 that began to be written in the New Kingdom
New Kingdom

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian History of Ancient Egypt between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt, and Twentieth dynasty of Egypt....
 around the Amarna period
Amarna

The site of Amarna is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of Minya Governorate, some 58 km south of the city of al-Minya, 312 km south of the Egyptian capital Cairo and 402 km north of Luxor....
. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Ramesside Period and later.

Late Egyptian literature

Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature
Ancient Egyptian literature

Ancient Egyptian literature comprises texts written in the Egyptian language during the History of ancient Egypt of Egypt. Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs....
, comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun
Story of Wenamun

The Story of Wenamun is a Literature text written in hieratic in the Egyptian language language. It is only known from one incomplete copy discovered in 1890 at al-Hibah, Egypt, and subsequently purchased in 1891 in Cairo by the Russian Egyptologist Vladimir Goleni?cev ....
, the love poems of the Chester-Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Ani
Papyrus of Ani

The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript written in cursive hieroglyphs and illustrated with color miniatures created in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of History of ancient Egypt, ....
. Instructions
Sebayt

Sebayt is the ancient Egyptian term for a genre of Ancient Egyptian literature. The word literally means 'teachings' or 'instructions' and refers to formally written ethical teachings focused on the "way of living truly"....
 became a popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. It was also the language of the Ramesside administration.

Differences between Middle and Late Egyptian

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 one between Middle and Old Egyptian: from being a synthetic
Synthetic language

A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications , although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties....
 it became an Analytic language. Their relationship has been described as being similar to that of Latin and Italian.
  • Written Late Egyptian was seemingly a better representative than Middle Egyptian of the spoken language in the New Kingdom and beyond: weak consonants 3, w, j, as well as the feminine ending .t were increasingly dropped, apparently because they stopped being pronounced.
  • The demonstrative pronouns p3 (masc.), t3 (fem.), and n3 (pl.) were used as definite articles.
  • The old form s?m.n=f (he heard) of the verb was replaced by s?m=f which had both prospective (he shall hear) and perfective (he heard) aspects. The past tense was also formed using the auxiliary verb jr (make), as in jr=f saHa=f (he has accused him).
  • Adjectives as attributes of nouns are often replaced by nouns.

Developments during the first millennium BCE

Hieroglyphic
Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements....
 orthography
Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
 saw an enormous expansion of its graphemic
Grapheme

In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....
 inventory between the Late Dynastic
Late Period of Ancient Egypt

The Late Period of Egypt refers to the last flowering of native Egyptian rulers after the Third Intermediate Period from the 26th Saite Dynasty into Persian Empire History of Egypt under Achaemenid Persian domination and ended with the death of Alexander the Great....
 and Ptolemaic
Ptolemaic dynasty

The Ptolemaic dynasty was a Hellenistic Macedonian royal family which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt for nearly 300 years, from 305 BC to 30 BC....
 periods.

Middle Egyptian had a renaissance after the Third Intermediate Period, when it was often used in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian.

Late Egyptian Grammars

  • J. Cerny, S. Israelit-Groll, C. Eyre, A Late Egyptian Grammar, 4th, updated edition - Biblical Institute; Rome, 1984

Sources

  • Kathryn A. Bard, Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Routledge 1999, ISBN 0415185890
  • Martin Haspelmath, Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, Walter de Gruyter 2001, ISBN 3110171546
  • Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge University Press 1995, ISBN 0521448492
  • Anastasios-Phoivos Christides, Maria Arapopoulou, Maria Chrite, A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity, Cambridge University Press 2007, ISBN 0521833078
  • Eric M. Meyers, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, 1997

Footnotes