vi. Lanquaoe. — The relative position of the Egyptian language among its neighbours is a question closely associated with that as to the racial connexions of the people. Our means of comparison with the surrounding idioms are not of eqiial value. For the Semitic languages— for the Mesopotamian dialects at least — we have documents perhaps as ancient as any from Egypt. For the Berber and Cushite languages of Africa we can but infer from quite modern evidence the linguistic conditions of earlier ages; and im this important field, therefore, little has as yet been attempted.
The lOgyptian language, together with certain languages of Barbary, Nubia, and Abyssinia, used to be regarded as forming one of the aistinct main divisions of human speech ; now it is clear that this isolating cla.ssilication cannot be justified. The group is not independent. Since Benfoy's attempt to demonstrate the affinity of the Egyp- tian and Semitic languages, his main contention has received increasing confirmation, until it is no longer possible to deny an originally very close relationship— collateral rather than filial— betweev the proto-IIamitic and proto-Semitic groups. The atlinity is specially prominent in grammatical features common to both. Of the.se the i>riiicipal are — ( I ) the same {;ender-endings, masc. w, fern, t ;
(2) an all but identical series of pronominal suffixes ;
(3) the use in both of a peculiar adjectival termina- tion, 'nisbeli'; (4) identity in four or five ( f the numerals ; (5) analogous treatment of the weali
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EGYPT
EGYPT
verb and derivatives ; (6) the identity of an old form of Ejryp- verbal flection and the Sem. perfect ; (7) verbalnouns with prefixed m ; (8) the import- ance of a single accent-vowel in each word or syntactical group, and the resultant 'construct Btate of the remaining vowels. There is, more- over, to be noted the correspondence between the Sem. and Egyp. consonants, extending to some fifteen undoubted equations (which embrace the important series K, i, \ V) ; «lso two or three more which are almost certain.* h urther, the same lack of any written representatives of the vowels, in the vocabulary the case for Sem. affinity is less strong. The number of Egyp. roots for which correspondents can reasonably be claimed in any Sem. dialect is smaU ; the large Sem. element in the language of the New Kingdom owes its pre- sence, not to any primitive relationship, but mere v to the political circumstances of the time. 1 he bulK of Egyp. roots is of a decidedly non-Sem. type. One of the most distinctive features of the bera. languages-the preponderance of trihteral roots- is, at 4y rate, not paralleled, even in the oldest Et^ptian documents, though it has been sug- gested that the divergence here is due to early phonetic degeneration. Horamel offers anotlier explanation of the facts. By the aid of certain very potent phonetic laws he institutes com- parisons between a number of Egyp. and Sumenan words, the latter being, in his view, an import dating from the prehistoric (Semitic) immigration from Mesopotamia. It is a question of at least equal difficulty how large a proportion of the roots should be regarded as of African, i.e. negroid, orioin, and so as vestiges of a stiU remoter, pre- Semitic period, during which the valley was peopled by an African race, part of whose lin- guistic stock was subsequently amalgamated witn that of the invading Asiatics. _, ■ . .u
If it were possible to trace with certainty trie genealogy of the hieroglyphic script, we might ixpect to find ourselves nearer the birthplace of the language. Hommel's theories do not ignore this problem ; the hieroglyphics came, he holds, like the rest of the intellectual equipment of the Egyptians, from Mesopotamia. If this were true of the script as a whole, it would nevertheless be ob^-ious that many of the signs had their origin in Africa; they represent natural objects, to be met with only there. Be this as it may, it is evident that the Babylonian and Egyptian systems had, for ages before we first meet with them, followed wdely divergent lines of development. The former, influenced by the nature of its writing materials had lost almost entirely the pictorial character which the latter, on the contrary, retained from the beginning to the end of hUtoric times. A conventionalizing, abbreviating tendency was, of course, inevitable il a script so ponderous was to be put to any but occasional decorative uses. But the abbre^aated forms -first the 'hieratic,' later the 'demotic script— grew and found employment side by side with their prototypes, the hieroglyphics, wtiich to the end were alone held suitable for sacred literature or ornamental inscriptions.
The signs in general employment during the classical period — the Middle and earlier ^ew Kingdoms — are estimated at about 500; some
• The following are the conventional tranficriptiont used jn thl» article (see ^g. Zeiltchr. xxxiv. 61 and ZDMtJ xm. ...).
L AwerUlned equation* : « ', a ft, n A, 1 w, n >, ^ J, • t. 3 *. SJ.1»'.D«M».P'. e P. P*. »«•.«• <>o"»'"^= ' C ff.'f.od. 0 ». f. X ii *• ^ »("" "Inea of the sibilanto, of course, particu- Url'y nncertaln). The Egj-p- / and a form of ft are without Bemitio equivalent*. T and « represent secondary forms of • i.
from the older epochs had then fallen into dxsam, many employed later had not yet appeared.