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Language of Ancient Eygpt
Note:All the questions and answers are taken from the AEL discussions.
Middle Eygptian Grammer
Clauses
WHICH clause is subordinate.?
The suggestion was that subordination is not marked overtly. In which case, it seems assumed that the FIRST clause is the matrix and the second clause is subordinated to it.
My beginner's question is: Why not take the first clause as the subordinate one? In both the examples the first clause has some kind of syntactic marker, _iw_ , which I am tempted to see as a subordinating conjunction. If Egyptian is at all parallel to Arabic, the _iw_ may be something like the
family of Arabic subordinators -- 'in, 'an, 'inna, etc. which as a group mean things like 'if', 'that', 'when', 'verily', etc.
Middle Egyptian had a very rigid word order, both within clauses and in sequence of clauses. The main clause always stands first, followed by any subordinate clauses. No, it was a marker of a main clause in Middle Egyptian. It did in fact evolve into a subordination marker in Late Egytptian and Demotic. But even there the main clause is first.Under this view, the two examples might be translated roughly:
Mr
Pronunciation
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--It's true that linguists aren't entirely certain how ancient Egyptian was pronounced, and the pronunciation did change over time, but still, we certainly could do better than we are.
sDm, sDm!
By way of introduction, I'm self-taught, working through Gardiner's EG and, being interested in the vowel problem, Vergote's Grammaire copte and Fecht's Wortakzent und Silbenstruktur (now 40 years old), as well as various other studies on Egyptian, Coptic, and Semitic. I don't completely
agree with all Fecht's and Vergote's conclusions, but it seems as if their work has often been neglected (at least until recenty).
That's why I'll talk about, e.g., Hashpeswe, Akhenyotne, and Harmah'eb instead of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, and Haremhab. (In discussing the vowel problem, I'll be using 3, j, ` instead of A, i, a for consonants.)
On the other hand...
Jerome Colburn
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---the problem that puzzles me is for example how egyptologists knew about that in order to transcribe the hieroglyphs. For some names we've got a Greek transcripton but other like the examples I gave, Nb-Khpru-Re and Re-ms-s for example, the logical translation for the egyptologist would have been Re-Khpru-Neb and Re-ms-s.
For names where we don't have any indication from Greek or other languages, we have
to assume that the "honorific transpositio" principle applies. We also have many examples where it is in evidence in ordinary writing when we would expect a different word order from the grammatical rules of the language, but find the order of things is written differently (eg. we would expect "Hw.t nTr" for "house of God" but it is in fact written with the word for god first: nTr Hw.t). Generally the correct word order is given by the rules for word order in sentences (which names usually are too). However there is sometimes a problem when there are two possible meanings, depending on the word order chosen - in which case we are kind of guessing.
Stephen Fryer
Lingusitic (S-P-H)
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-- A question: I believe that in some phonetic transformations, perhaps into Greek, H becomes S and P becomes F. If that is correct, is it possible that Manetho's "Osarseph" can be a Greek transformation of Asar-Hapi. I am asking only on
the linguistic possibilities, and am not looking for a discussion about the validity of Manetho's claim about Osarseph. I do note that Manetho was supposedly a priest in the cult of Serapis.
I know that certain Egyptian dialects had /S/ (sh) for /x/ (kh) (cf Loprieno p.41), but I don't know of any examples of /S/ for /H/. Of course, that doesn't really signify as "wsir" wasn't written with /S/, in any case, but /s/. /p/ and /f/ could be interchangeable over the centuries. Having made a (still ongoing) study of Manetho, myself, I would counsel no one to take much stock in his
rendering of a name.
Yes, Manetho was involved in the cult of Serapis (see Waddell edition pp.xi-xiv and 192-195) and seems to have written astrological works in addition to his Aegyptiaca. So one would tend to think of him as an astronomer and priest/scribe, as there is evidence that these two professions were actually one and the same in Egypt, such people being known as "Hierogrammateis". That Manetho could read the heavens, I have no reason to doubt, but I can give you plenty of examples that show he didn't know how to read a cartouche and possibly was not that well-aquainted with the Egyptian writing system, in general. I am not saying that Manetho did not sometimes give auditory perceptions of names that had been corrupted through being handed down via oral tradition. Sometimes he did--which is fine because perhaps he didn't always have access to the cartouches. I am saying that I feel sure that even when he had the actual cartouche, he often read it wrong. One example ties right in with your question: Manetho gave the name of "Khufu" as "Suphis". He would have written it "Shufis", except that
Greeks can't say "sh". So, you see, the /x/ in "Khufu" was exchanged for a sibilant. This is not a mistake, however, just a substitution (see above). However, the predecessor, "Snefru" is a different story. Manetho gives him as "Soris". Why? Because he just read the (s -r-w) elements in the cartouche, completely ignoring the "nfr" glyph and, as in "Sufis", changed the final /w/ to /i/, which was a common enough practice and probably reflected the pronunciation. Here's a beauty --"Apachnan" of the Hyksos Dynasty appears to be a misreading of "Aqenenre", the throne name of Apepi II. Evidently the sign for the disc of the sun or "ra" was somehow, (okay, perhaps due to erosion or just plain bad writing), mistaken for the sign which represents /p/. As odd as this may seem, it must be so because all the other signs needed to write Apachnan or ( (p) aA - q- nn) are present within the cartouche.
Osarseph? Who knows? Maybe it was Osiris-Sepa or (Wsir-zp), which are attested.
Marianne Luban
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On this subject, the 'apiru=Hebrew is a stretch. The 'apiru are documented all over the Near East, making trouble for the settled bronze state entities, and the big powers regularly punished them with raids, capturing some. Those are the 'apiru consigned to haul stone for Ramesses II's temple construction. I will only say this about Exodus. The Biblical story has the Hebrews making mudbricks, not hauling stones. Pharaoh's building of a new capital need vast quantities for mudbricks, for all houses, even the royal palace, was basically built of mudbricks, and even storehouses were of mudbrick. Additionally, the Bible has the Hebrews living in Egypt, and not roaming all over the Near East harassing the settled people. So no, the 'apiru are not Hebrews.
Frank Joseph Yurco
Grammatical Questions
Q1) Does the '=' used with the dependent pronouns just show that it is a suffix to a word?
Suffix pronouns are joined to the main word by the "=" but dependent and independent
pronouns are separate words and shouldn't be connected that way.
Q2 ) I notice that several hieroglyphs are similar phonetically (like h= reed shelter, h=twisted wick, h=placenta and h=animal's belly). Is there a guide to the correct transliteration of each of the hieroglyphs? I've noticed that the underscored letters are capitalized.
They were phonetically distinct in the early Middle Kingdom - some of them became confused later in the development of the language. In the plain-text transliterations we use the following encodings for the sounds:
"reed shelter" = h
"twisted wick" = H
"placenta" = x
"animal's belly" = X
For more than you ever wanted to know on this subject, including how to represent
entire hieroglyphic texts with their layouts, see http://www.ccer.ggl.ruu.nl/codage/codage.htm
Q3) What about biliterals and triliterals?
The individual consonants of which it is made up are shown in the transliteration - you only need to worry about this if you are trying to indicate the layout of the original signs, which is not what transliterations are about.
Q4) Also what does the "." represent?
It shows where the root of a word ends and a grammatical inflection begins: eg
sDm=f
"he hears" but sDm.n=f "he heard" where the .n is the "past tense" marker.
Similarly, in some transliterations some characters seem to be ignored. For instance the symbol for plural (three dashes) , is ignored (for example in the dependent pronouns how do you dell the difference between it-singular and they/them-objects? both are 'st'?) and 'mk' = "Look/Behold" looks like it ought to transliterate as 'm'k' or 'mak'.
The ones shown in the transliteration are ones with a phonetic value; others are there as either phonetic complements or as determinatives, and have no phoneticvalue. Actually there are diferent words for singular "he," "she," and "they" (sw, sy, and sn). The word st for "she/it" is somewhat of an anchronism as it didn'tcome into wide usage until the New Kingdom, though it was used there in "Middle Egyptian" inscriptions, along with other influences from Late Egyptian.The "arm" sign in "mk" was originally a different one from the arm represented in
plain text transliteration as "a" (the sound of which is like ayin in Biblical Hebrew). We should really write this word as m=k (or perhaps mi=k), because it is in fact the imperative of the verb mAA "see" with a second person ending. We also find m=T when a single female is addressed, and m=Tn for addressing several people.
Q4: Could you give us an example of a construction where the future action is time
specific? For example "He will [do X,Y, or Z] [when 1,2, or 3 happens].
Stephen Fryer wrote:
--- One thing I dislike about this exercise of Geoff's is that it gives the impression that
the Hr + infinitive construction was used as a normal present tense. This was not true in Middle Egyptian, where it was used to indicate an action currently continuing; in Late Egyptian, it became the usual construction for the present tense. In Middle Egyptian the normal present tense for simple statements was the "iw sDm=f" form.
Q5 : Are you saying that in ME, the Hr + the infinitive was usually used to denote an action such as: "I am listening to him." while the infinitive = suffix pronoun was the usual construction for the present tense such as: "I listen to him." ?
And, does the "I listen to him." construction imply a "time specific action" such as: "I listen to him every day." or "I listen to him when he speaks." or "I listen to him when I can." ?
Q 6: When Geoff wrote:
jw=j Hr mrj.t
"I am loving", "I was loving", or "I love". using the suffix pronoun
mk wj Hr mrj.t=k
"Look, I love you" or "hey, I am loving you" using the dependent pronoun, was he saying that both constructions could be used for the past tense as well as the present tense; or was he saying that while the construction using the suffix pronoun can be used for the present tense and for the past tense, the construction using the dependent pronoun can only be used for the present tense?
The Infinitive
The infinitive is a verbal noun; in some languages it is declined and/or have gender(s). Because it is a verbal noun, it can function as a subject To run is fun or a direct object.
I like food. I like to run.
In ME the infinitive is a noun (nominal) form deriving from verbal roots. Because it is a noun, it can occur in a sentence anywhere a noun can, including after prepositions. I'm not sure about what you are saying here: Since writers talk about the 'infinitive'
>having or not having the gender marker /+t/,
I thought that only certain verb roots had an infinitive ending in "t"
(mostly 3d weak class). Can someone comment on this?
I thought the reference to the "infinitive" of the verb was the infinitive of the Egyptian verb, not the English verb. Could you take a moment and explain what he has done here.In my reading about Ancient Egyptian syntax, I keep seeing reference to the 'infinitive'. I remain confused as to what that means, because I am approaching it from Arabic and Hebrew, where the closest thing to an infinitive is a verbal noun. Since writers talk about the 'infinitive 'having or not having the gender marker /+t/, it looks even more like a verbal noun.
Grammar
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On Mood and Tense, cf Gardiner sections 294, 295 (page 219):
"With the means at our disposal it is not possible to distinguish different moods in Egyptian, if such existed."
"It is clear that Middle Egyptian had not yet developed, as Coptic later did, a precise set of tenses relating the time of the verbal action to the time-standpoint of the speaker. The tenses which we discover in the earlier period are concerned, like the Semitic tenses, rather with the singleness or repetition, the momentariness or continuity, of the notion expressed by the verb ... "
Later on the same page, apparently in the mode of thinking that places English at the evolutionary apex, Gardiner suggests that Egyptian verbs made an effort to try to become more like English. "The great wealth of compound verb-forms evidently owes its origin in part, but only in part, to an effort to acquire definite tense-distinctions," says Gardiner. An alternative interpretation is that the real evolution to be seen here is not one of the verb system, but an evolution in how westerners have
interpreted Ancient Egyptian verbs.
Other semitic languages, in particular Arabic, have gotten along pretty well for thousands of years without a tense system for their verbs, so it is not inevitable that tense must develop where there was none to begin with.
The non-tensed system is described by Gardiner in section 295 as follows:
"In the participles we shall distinguish (1) an imperfective tense ultimately implying repetition or continuity, and (2) a perfective tense without any such implications." What he calls 'tense' is NOT tense as English speakers see it, because by looking at the form of a verb, you cannot tell what time the action of the verb took place. Instead, all you can tell is whether the action is unfinished (continuous, repetitive) or not, which may better be described as aspect.
The upshot for beginning translators?
Variations between future tenses and variations between past tenses that are made in western languages may not be very important in Egyptian. Instead verbs are either 'finished' or 'unfinished' (perfect vs. imperfect).
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--- Relative to the discussion about the interpretation and history of the expressions from m33 or mk, what kind of evidence from texts or from linguistic patterns could be found to suggest one explanation over the others? Any cognate patterns in other languages? Could variations with different spellings be compared? Is it possible to look at whether the expression appears in main versus subordinate clauses, and how the context affects the form?
The particle m=k occurs in situations where, in Hebrew, we would find hinneh, and it
is pretty clear from these contexts that in meaning it is demonstrative, or emphatic. It is always found introducing a main clause, although it my be used at the beginning of a non-initial main clause, unlike the particle iw (which as a clause-opening particle always starts an intitial main clause in Middle
Egyptian).
The only variations in spelling I know of are the ones involving the generalization of the arm sign, under the influence of hieratic, from the specific one used in older hieroglyphic texts. I don't think it is related closely to the verb mAA "see" since the writing is very different - in fact it looks more like an imperative of "give" ("give attention to" perhaps?). The basic particle is simply "m" (or perhaps "mi"), with the second person suffix pronouns added as appropriate: m=k, m=T, m=Tn (depending on the gender and number of people addressed).
---- Q: In the typical hieroglyphics in painting and sculpture [such as in temples] is the message addressed to the reader as a single person or to an audience as plural readers? In other words, should we expect to see "m=k" more often or "m=Tn" more often in those circumstances?
The most common form is m=k. You will only find the others when specific reference to
multiple persons or to a single female has been made previously in the text.
Pronouns
"iw mAA.Tn sy you see her, " and " iw mA.n sw sAt.f" his daughter saw him.
both taken from Hochs grammar. Is there a particular order so as to know who is seeing and who is sawn?
** Two remarks:
(1) Note that
a) the dependant personal pronoun is used as pronoun *object* of a verb, and
b) the suffix pronoun is used as pronoun *subject* of a finite sDm=f verb.
c) The suffix pronoun is also attached to prepositions. (here: object - who is seen, subject - who sees)
So in your cases there cannot be a misunderstanding because of 1a and 1b: if it were "She sees you" it would have been _ iw mAA=s Tn_, and if it were "he saw his daughter" it would have been:
_iw mA.n=f sA.t=f_
But perhaps you thought that the place of sw was confusing?
2) a) When object and subject are nouns, the normal word-order in verbal sentences is:
operator/adverb-verb-subject-accusative object-dative object-adverb to remember: "VSO"-order
[VSO = verb-subject-object]
b) However, when subject and/or object is a pronoun, the regular VSO order is broken, as pronouns move to the front: nouns cannot precede pronouns. E.g. a pronominal object would precede a nominal subject, like in your second example (sw before sA.t=f; if we would have had only nouns, "his daughter saw her father", it would have been VSO _iw mA.n sA.t=f it=s_). With this moving to the front, any suffix pronoun is not detached from its verb, so any moved pronoun cannot move in between verb and suffix-subject (only between verb and nominal subject). to remember: pronouns move close to the verb.
c) Within the pronoun class, there is also a pecking order: a dative object pronoun comes before an accusative object pronoun. So a dependant pronoun cannot precede a suffix pronoun like a dative _n_+ suffix. to remember: "n=f sw"-order
Examples:
iw di sS Sa.t n TAty = the scribe (sS) gives (di) the letter (Sa.t)
to (n) the vizier (TAty) [rule 2a above]
iw di=f Sa.t n Taty = he gives the letter to the vizier [rule 1b above]
iw di sy sS n TAty = the scribe gives it to the vizier [rule 1a, 2b]
iw di=f sy n Taty = he gives it to the vizier [rule 1a, 1b, 2b]
iw di n=f sS Sa.t = the scribe gives the letter to him [rule 1c, 2b]
iw di n=f sy sS = the scribe gives it to him [rule 1a, 1c, 2b, 2c]
iw di=f n=f sy = he gives it to him [1a, 1b, 1c, 2b, 2c]
Note that this moving to the front of pronouns is somewhat similar to what happens in French ("le scribe donne la lettre au vizir" , "il la lui donne").
"iw mAA.Tn sy you see her," and "iw mA.n sw sAt.f "his daughter saw him.
both taken from Hochs grammar.
Is there a particular order so as to know who is seeing and who is sawn?
The dependant pronoun follows the verb form as closely as possible, but stands on it's own.
In the first example the verb has a suffix pronoun attached to the end of it as part of the (sDm=f) verb form so the dependant pronoun comes after. The one who is seeing (the subject) is the suffix pronoun 'Tn - you' (feminine singular). 'sy - her' is the direct object (the one who is seen).
In the second example the suffix is attached to the noun 'sAt', ('his daughter' - the subject), so the dependant pronoun moves closer to the verb.
The vowels
--By way of introduction, I'm self-taught, working through Gardiner's EG and, being interested in the vowel problem, Vergote's Grammaire copte and Fecht's Wortakzent und Silbenstruktur (now 40 years old), as well as various other studies on Egyptian, Coptic, and Semitic. I don't completely agree with all Fecht's and Vergote's conclusions, but it seems as if their work has often been neglected (at least until recenty).
One thing I have problems with is the idea that we can run the phonetic changes that
resulted eventually in Coptic backwards to determine earlier pronunciation. A lot
of information gets lost along the way - entropy in action. There are times when what has been deduced from Coptic is flatly contradicted by what we seem able to deduce from the old texts themselves and vice versa.
Suffiix Pronouns
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Philip said
--- One must look at all prefixes, suffixes, and maybe even infixes, as remnants of an original word.
We have to be careful about assuming a one-to-one relationship between word, affix, and meaning. Thinking that way can prevent us from realizing that languages have a lot of tricks for making meaning, not just tacking suffixes onto stems. In Ancient Egyptian especially, word formation involves a lot more than affixation, and the affixation that is there is not as simple as we would like.
The same letter or sound can be the expression of a variety of suffixes, infixes and prefixes. The Arabic letter /t/, for example, appears in a lot of morphology: first person singular perfect, second person singular, verbal nouns (form II), unit nouns (ta marbuta), mentality or abstraction (form VIII), mutuality or reflexiveness (forms V and VI), and feminine (ta marbuta). So what word is /t/ supposed to be historically?
Often two affixes are expressed by the same letter. A parallel in English is when you put together a plural and a possessive but express them both with the letter /s/. You could add both /s/ affixes to a word ending in 's' resulting in words like [mattresses's], as in "The two mattresses's stitching was different." It is hard to say where all the Ss "came from".
We can clearly contrast inflectional versus derivational kinds of affixing. A stem can vary in endings, each variation indicating a slot in a paradigm, without having origin in a word. When a noun and its accompaning adjective agree in person (or when a verb and subject agree in number or gender), we don't add the same word to both.
Number, too, is marked in non-word ways. Singular, dual, and plural nouns and adjectives in Egyptian do not differ by adding words. They follow or participate in inflectional patterns.
Then there is definiteness. If there were a way of indicating it in Ancient Egyptian, it doesn't show up as a word. In classical Arabic, definiteness was marked not only by the article prefix /'al+/ (not a word) but also by final 'nunation': indefinite nouns had final /n/ after the case marking vowel, but definite nouns did not. Nunation did not show up in the normal script and was never a word.
And plenty of morphemes which may be affixes do not have a word sort of meaning ('belonging to class canine', or 'write'). Instead, they can have grammatical meaning ('treat this word as an adjective instead of a noun', or 'expect a clause to follow').
In Ancient Egyptian, where we have no verbal examples, a lot of the morphology that was active in the language ends up being invisible, forcing us to make reconstructive guesses about how it worked. Gemination is poorly understood even though it is partly visible. Other processes like vowel
changes, word boundaries, syllable boundaries, metathesis (in fem plural for example), and assimilation are far more invisible to us. Who could say gemination has its source in a word?
There are examples of blending of morphological rules, where two affixes become mixed and frozen into a new inflectional pattern. An example is the mysterious combination of /s+/ and /t+/ prefixes that ended up forming in Arabic the Form X pattern [ istaf & ala ] and in Hebrew the Hitpa'el binyan. Certainly in Egyptian we can see /s/ and see /t/ affixes, but the history of the process is foggy. In these cases, again, we cannot say the new affix is related to an old word.
Languages have non-affixational morphology, expressing meaning without adding an affix. Sound plurals in Arabic, vowel harmony, or the use of tone are examples. Forming a verbal noun (infinitive) from a verb usually involves changing the syllable structure rather than adding a suffix.
There are affixes that are so old, so stable, that nobody knows if there were ever an 'original' word that the affix was a reduction of. In Afro-asiatic languages two examples are the 'nisba' or relational suffix
/+iyy/ and the participle making prefix /m+/. Examples in English include
/+ish/ (skittish, impish), /+ate/ (navigate, dictate), /+er/ (writer,walker),
/de+/ (destroy, defeat), /+ar/ (angular, solar).
The same affix may have a variety of meanings, all of which cannot clearly be tied to a single original word. English, for example, has words like 'unloose', 'unbound', 'unlearn', 'undo', 'unearth', 'unfrock', 'unnerve', 'until', 'unless', 'uncolored', 'uncanny'. The meanings can't fall into a single word, and etymologically the prefix /un/ may be related to German /ent/, French /in/ or Greek /un/, all of which in turn have never been separate words.
Using reconstructions to justify the separateness of reconstructed words is not fair. It may be a good idea for historical linguists to use logic and comparison to posit the strong possiblity of some earlier common word between related languages, but that common word is not data. The same must be kept in mind about cultures. Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic are not languages or societies that we can point to, or have evidence of.
An exercise which has revealed that most meaning in natural language is encoded in ways other than adding chunks is computer translation, a science which started out breaking words up, but could not continue very far without abandoning that assumption.
Lewis Carroll had fun with suffixes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, where he wrote:
"I never heard of 'uglification'", Alic ventured to say. "What is it?"
The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "Never heard of uglifying!" it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, I suppose?" "Yes," said Alice doubtfully: "it means - to make - anything - prettier."
"Well, then," the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to uglify is,
you are a simpleton."
Matthew
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I don't understand what you mean when you say -k is a possessive sign. In Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit, it is a sign of the genitive case. I think we must remember that all suffixes and prefixes can be reduced to one original word.
In Semitic -k is a relic from an old word meaning "you". In Latin, amo amas amat
amamus amant (forgive me if I don't have it right) every single suffix is from an old word meaning I, you , he , we , etc. As for maak, k seems to be a popularword for you in Afro-asiatic. In Sanskrit, -k is a possessive sign. It is related to Polish and Russian genetive endings -ego. One must look at all prefixes, suffixes, and maybe even infixes, as remnants of an original word. Russian Romanoff means of Roman.
Hebrew ohevet means loves-----she. This is the key in all grammar. Prefixes and suffixes are abbreviations for actual words, whose meaning is usually obvious when you think about it. For example, the -men ending in ancient Greek simply means "us'" or "we". "you goeth" simply means you-go-thou.
Phil
