the egyptian language at the time of the nineteenth dynasty

480 Pages·2014·9.29 MB·English

THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AT THE TIME
OF THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY
by
DAVID BLUMSOHN
Submitted in accordance with the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Literature and Philosophy
in the subject
SEMITIC LANGUAGES
atthe
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
Promoter: Dr P S VERMAAK
JUNE 1995
"Blessed be he who invented writing" -
Jean Paul from a pious saying of the ancient Indians.
"Je tiens l'affaire" -
Jean Francois Champollion, 1822.
DEDICATION
To my parents
1" .:lM -,C'lC "l.:l l'Crzi
-,CM n,ui rticn ';ltci
THANKS
I wish to thank Professor H J Dreyer for teaching me Egyptian and Coptic
and Akkadian and Sumerian and much else besides. I recall with much
delight and satisfaction many reading sessions with him, through which I
gained many insights and a relish of knowledge.
,, ;upi ,,
~ ~, ;iz;,
"i'"W
ni~ac
(Ethics of the Fathers)
Thank you
I thank Dr. P S Vermaak too for promoting this work and for his teaching,
guidance, availability, kindness and patience in helping to mould a vast
subject into a single descriptive and analytic entity.
I wish to express my gratitude too to Mrs S C M Terblanche. She not only
typed and retyped the manuscript and organised its structure and
presentation, but she always encouraged, advised and helped me with
infinite patience.
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SUMMARY
The Nineteenth Dynasty, which ushered in the Ramesside period in ± 1308 B.C.E.
is an important period in which to study the development of the Egyptian
language, falling as it does between the time of the Middle Egyptian (ME) idiom
and the Late Egyptian (LE) language. Regarding the Egyptian language,
Gardiner (1982:1) writes" ... the idiom in which the public records of the Twentieth
Dynasty are couched differs widely from that found, for example in the royal
decrees of the Sixth Dynasty". There was a gradual change from a "synthetic"
language in ME into an "analytical" one in LE and later Coptic. The synthetic
tenses are first supplemented and then gradually replaced by "analytic" forms.
And this happened during the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty.
This thesis addresses the Nineteenth Dynasty texts, with respect to grammar,
semantics and syntax (mainly verbal forms). It studies the occurrence of Middle
Egyptian synthetic forms and Late Egyptian analytic forms in the Nineteenth
Dynasty texts and makes observations on forms which appear to be unique to the
Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian (NDE) too.
This study describes and analyses the language, both in a synchronic way - "frozen"
in its time (as a type of grammar book), and comparing literary and non-literary
uses of the time, - and in a diachronic manner, seeking to show the evolution and
development of language forms, their ancestors and their successors.
A study of these texts as shown in this thesis demonstrates that the written
language of the Nineteenth Dynasty is a unique blend of grammatical and
syntactic forms: pure ME forms, LE literary and non-literary forms, as well as
forms peculiar to NDE. Thus NDE is "an independent self-sufficient system,
which is neither Middle Egyptian nor Late Egyptian of the Twentieth Dynasty."
(Groll 1973:70)
Key Terms:
Middle Egyptian (language); Late Egyptian (language); Nineteenth Dynasty
Egyptian (language); Synchronic study; Diachronic study; Synthetic language;
Analytic language; Tense; Aspect.
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CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. l
SECTION A:
HISTORICAL SURVEY OF EGYPT. ........................................................................ 13
TENSE IN EGYPTIAN ................................................................................................... 25
SECTION B:
CHAPTER 1
THE MIDDLE EGYPTIAN jjt pw jrjw.n.f. ................................................................. 41
CHAPTER 2
THE MIDDLE EGYPTIAN AUXILIARY VERB c/Jc ......................................... 44
CHAPTER 3
THE MIDDLE EGYPTIAN jn CONSTRUCTION ................................................ 52
CHAPTER 4
THE MIDDLE EGYPTIAN PSEUDOVERBAL CONSTRUCTION ................ 68
CHAPTERS
THE LATE EGYPTIAN FIRST PRESENT ............................................................. 80
CHAPTER 6
MIDDLE EGYPTIAN s<jm.n.f ..................................................................................... 101
CHAPTER 7
THE s<Jm.f .......................................................................................................................... 119
CHAPTER 8
MIDDLE EGYPTIAN NOUN + srjm.f. ................................................................... 155
- lll -
CHAPTER 9
THE jr CONDITIONAL CLAUSES .......................................................................... 160
CHAPTER 10
THE AFFIRMATIVE IMPERATIVE ....................................................................... 164
CHAPTER 11
THE MIDDLE EGYPTIAN sf},m.jn.f. ........................................................................ 176
CHAPTER 12
NEGATIVE SENTENCES ............................................................................................ 180
CHAPTER 13
THE LA TE EGYPTIAN THIRD FUTURE .......................................................... 250
CHAPTER 14
THE LATE EGYPTIAN CONJUNCTIVE FORM .............................................. 270
CHAPTER 15
THE LATE EGYPTIAN SEQUENTIAL FORMS ............................................... 288
CHAPTER 16
jrj AS AN AUXILIARY TO ANOTHER VERB ................................................. 294
CHAPTER 17
THE LATE EGYPTIAN SECOND TENSE ........................................................... 301
CHAPTER 18
THE TEMPORAL wnn IN LA TE EGYPTIAN .................................................... 308
CHAPTER 19
THE wn AND wnn ......................................................................................................... 316
CHAPTER 20
THE LATE EGYPTIAN jw.f /Jr sqm.f OF THE FUTURE ............................. 323
CHAPTER 21
LATE EGYPTIAN FIRST FUTURE ........................................................................ 327
- IV -
CHAPTER 22
jw IN ME AND IN LE ................................................................................................ 330
CHAPTER 23
THE CONVERTER jw IN LATE EGYPTIAN .................................................... 343
CHAPTER 24
NON-VERBAL SENTENCES ...................................................................................... 349
CHAPTER 25
INDICATORS OF DIRECT SPEECH AND GREETING ................................ 375
CHAPTER 26
PARTICIPLES .................................................................................... ;. ............................. 384
CHAPTER 27
MISCELLANEOUS ......................................................................................................... 391
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................. 404
ADDENDUM I .................................................................................................................. 434
ADDENDUM 11 ................................................................................................................. 442
ADDENDUM 111 ............................................................................................................... 446
ADDENDUM IV ................................................................................................................ 449
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 461
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INTRODUCTION
I. SETTING THE SCENE
The Nineteenth Dynasty followed the collapse of Akhenaten's religious
revolution, when his successors, Smenkhare, Tutankhamun, Ay and Horemhab
had passed on.1 Ramesses I founded this dynasty, and he was followed in turn by
Seti I, (1308-1291), Ramesses II (1290-1224), Merneptah (1224 to 1214) and then
Seti II, Amenmesse, Siptah, and the female Pharaoh, Twosre", she "who in
Homer is called Polybus, husband of Alcandra and in whose time Troy was
taken" (Gardiner 1982:445); the traditional date for this last event is 1183
B.C.E.2
Gardiner (1961:247) writes that after the recovery from Akhenaten's religious
revolution, Egypt was a changed world, "It is not easy to define the exact nature
of the changes, since there are many exceptions; yet it is impossible not to notice
the marked deterioration of the art, the literature, and indeed, the general
culture of the people. The language which they wrote approximates more closely
to the vernacular, and incorporates many foreign words; the copies of ancient
texts are incredibly careless, as if the scribes utterly failed to understand their
meaning."
Goldwasser ( 1985:55), writing of the epistolary formula, suggests that the model
normative Nineteenth Dynasty letters show "a synthesis between the new and the
The conjectural dates of the Nineteenth Dynasty are about 1308 to 1184 B.C.E. Cf. the chapter
on tt"' ~1istory of Egypt and the chronological tables of the kingdoms and dynasties.
2
The succeeding Twentieth Dynasty - the Late Ramesside Period - began with the reign of
Setnakhte and he was followed by the 32-year reign of Ramesses III, and then in tum by eight
more relatively unimportant Ramesses. This dynasty came to an end in about 1087 after the brief
era called "Repetition of Births" (wf1m mslVf), within which Herihor. the high priest of Amen-Re c
at Karnak, temporarily arrogated to himself the kingship.
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old", and she notes further (Goldwasser 1985:51) that a synchronic grammar of
the Twentieth Dynasty has been well defined, by Cerny and Groll, but that this
has not been done for the Nineteenth Dynasty.
In discussing the Hieratic Ostracon pl. XLVI, 2 recto, 2 verso, a Nineteenth
Dynasty non-literary Late Egyptian (LE) text, Sarah Groll ( 1973:67) writes, "Our
main source of information for LE is the non-literary texts of the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Dynasties (the Ramesside period). But even in the framework of the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, one can trace a considerable grammatical
development. It seems that Middle Egyptian (ME) elements still exist in the
non-literary texts of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Indeed, since they occur only under
specific conditions, which are peculiar to the Nineteenth Dynasty, one is entitled
to describe the LE of the Nineteenth Dynasty as an independent, self-sufficient
system, which is neither ME nor the LE of the Twentieth Dynasty".
Ophel ( 1985: 153) in discussing the Ramesses II Battle of Kadesh poem writes,
"We note the clear use of the perfect active s<Jm.fs with their negative
counterpart, the bw s<Jm.f of the past (a Nineteenth Dynasty formation). These
specific LE formations stand side by side with ME elements, e.g. the emphatic
sm.n.f formations, and a narrative fChC.n.j (in line 105)."
It has been noted that the written language used at this time combined ME
grammatical elements and formations side-by-side with the newer later LE
I
forms. .
Vemus ( 1985:311) is of opinion that there is a diachronic shift from a mostly
aspect-oriented system in Old and Middle Egyptian towards a mostly time
oriented system in Late Egyptian. For example, in the performative statement
dj.n.j became jw.j l:zr rdjt and then tw.j l:zr djt - a performative statement
within a time limit. But what about the language used in the time between ME
usage before and during the Eighteenth Dynasty and that of the LE of the Late
Ramesside period of the Twentieth Dynasty? The author has called this the
Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian language, and has abbreviated it to NDE in the
text.
Regarding the Egyptian language, Gardiner ( 1982: l-24c) writes ". .. the idiom in
which the public records of the Twentieth Dynasty are couched differs widely
from that found, for example in the royal decrees of the Sixth Dynasty (about
2420-2294 B.C.E.)". There was a gradual change from a "synthetic" language into