Egyptian (Ancient)

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About the Egyptian (Ancient) language

Basic details

Language family Afro-Asiatic
Language group Egyptian
Dialects Demotic, Late Egyptian, Old Egyptian, Archaic Egyptian, Middle Egyptian
Decipherment Deciphered
Writing systems Egyptian Hieratic, Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Chronology 3050 BCE – 1300 CE

Recommended resources

Introductory (first-year students)

All-in-one Middle Egyptian Grammar Book · by James Eric Hoch · 1997

Advanced study

Sign list "List of Hieroglyphic Signs" Book appendix · by Alan Henderson Gardiner · 1957
Grammar James Eric Hoch Check resource for details
Dictionary A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian Book · by Raymond Oliver Faulkner · 2017

About these data

Main sources

Glottolog egyp1246
Script Source egy Some writing system (script) related information
ISO 639-3 egy

How did we get this date?

3050 BCE — 1300 CE

The chronology for Egyptian (Ancient) is a date range derived from the scholars listed below:

Notes

  1. Stauder, "History of the Egyptian Language," 930.Visit"This is traditionally divided into the following stages: • [Archaic Egyptian: fragmentarily attested, Dynasties 0–3, c. 3050–2650 BC] • Old Egyptian (Old Kingdom, c.2650–2150 BC) • Middle Egyptian (First Intermediate Period through Amarna, c. 2150–1350 BC) • Late Egyptian (Amarna through Third Intermediate Period, c. 1350–650 BC) • Demotic (Late Period, c. 650 BC–AD 300) • Coptic (the indigenous language of Late Antique and medieval Egypt, c. AD 300–1300)"
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Cite this page

MLA Modern Language Association (8th ed.)

OMNIKA Foundation Contributors. "Egyptian (Ancient)." OMNIKA – World Mythology Index, OMNIKA Foundation, 23 Aug. 2022, omnika.org/stable/1032. Accessed 10 Mar. 2025.

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APA American Psychological Association (6th ed.)

OMNIKA (2022, August 23). Egyptian (Ancient). Retrieved from https://omnika.org/stable/1032

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CMS Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.)

OMNIKA Foundation Contributors. "Egyptian (Ancient)." Las Vegas, NV: OMNIKA Foundation. Created August 23, 2022. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://omnika.org/stable/1032.

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Bibliography

Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 25th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International, 2022. Accessed August 20, 2022. https://www.ethnologue.com.
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Faulkner, Raymond O. A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian: Modernized by Boris Jegorović. Edited by Boris Jegorović. Oxford, United Kingdom: Griffith Institute, 2017.
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Gardiner, Sir Alan H. "List of Hieroglyphic Signs," 438–548. In Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. 3rd ed. rev. Oxford, United Kingdom: Griffith Institute, 1957.
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Gardiner, Sir Alan H. Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. 3rd ed. rev. Oxford, United Kingdom: Griffith Institute, 1957.
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Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath, and Sebastian Bank. "Glottolog: A Database of Languages." Leipzig, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Created 2011 [?]. Accessed August 23, 2022. https://glottolog.org.
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Hoch, James E. Middle Egyptian Grammar. Vol. 15, SSEA Publication. Mississauga, Canada: Benben, 1997.
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SIL International Contributors. "ISO 639-3 Registration Authority: International Standard for Language Codes." Dallas, TX: SIL International. Accessed August 23, 2022. https://iso639-3.sil.org.
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SIL International Contributors. "ScriptSource: Index of Languages and Writing Systems." Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Created June 11, 2011. Accessed August 6, 2022. https://scriptsource.org.
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Stauder, Andreas. "History of the Egyptian Language." In The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology, 930–956. Edited by Elizabeth Bloxam and Ian Shaw. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2020.
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Unicode Consortium Contributors. "ISO 15924 Registration Authority: Codes for the Representation of Names of Scripts." Mountain View, CA: The Unicode Consortium. Created 2004. Accessed August 24, 2022. https://unicode.org/iso15924.
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