How did the sound of the ancient Egyptian language become known? * Interesting

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The Egyptian language with its famous hieroglyphs is one of the oldest and most difficult to study. How did this become possible, provided that the carriers of the Egyptian lived before the 7th century AD?

The correct language name

First of all, it is worth noting that the use of the term "ancient Egyptian language" is considered incorrect. For example, Greek and Ancient Greek are the correct names for the language, since there is a modern version of Greek that has official status.

As for the Egyptian, it is currently assigned the status of the dead. Egyptian was used by the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt. Modern Egyptians use the Arabic language, which is considered official. In particular, locals speak Arabic literary languages and dialects - Saidi and Masri.

If we mention the ancient Egyptian, then only as the language of the Old Kingdom - the historical period of the reign of the pharaohs.

Language stages

Specialists in the field of linguistic Egyptology distinguish several periods of the Egyptian language:

Old Egyptian early;
Old Egyptian classic;
Middle Egyptian classic;
New Egyptian
Middle Egyptian late;
demotic;
Ptolemaic;
Coptic.

Each stage was used for a certain period of time. In general, the Egyptian language is considered one of the most ancient, including in written form.Found memos dated to the 4th millennium BC.

Interesting fact: The study of the Egyptian language began in the second quarter of the 19th century. The most intensive research started in 1822. All thanks to the founder of Egyptology - the Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion, who managed to understand what the Egyptian hieroglyphs mean.

How, then, did you find out the specifics of the sound of the language, highlight vowels and consonants, pronunciation rules? This was made possible thanks to the Coptic language, which was used from the 3rd to the 17th century A.D.

Currently, there is a service at the Coptic Church in the Coptic Church. Attempts are also being made to revive the Coptic as the native language of the Egyptians.

In the process of deciphering ancient Egyptian texts, experts learned to distinguish some names, for example, Cleopatra and Ptolemy. Then it turned out that the pronunciation of each character in these names coincides with the first letter of the name of the item (in Coptic), which this character shows.

The hieroglyph depicting a lion (in Coptic labou) is read like the sound "l". The mouth (in Coptic ro) is pronounced "p" and so on. The Egyptians did not indicate the vowels in the letter, so the experts only have to guess about their sound.

The dead Egyptian language, one of the most ancient, went through a large number of stages, the last of which was Coptic. Coptic disappeared from use relatively recently - in the 17th century, although service in it is still conducted in the Coptic church. Thanks to a comparison of ancient hieroglyphs and Coptic, the researchers found out how the Egyptian language sounded.

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