Five Historical Stages of the Egyptian Language Changes in grammar and vocabulary occur in any language that is in long, continuous use, and the ancient Egyptian written language passed through five stages over its 5,000-year history. Many intermediate stages in the spoken language were not reflected in writing. This discussion focuses only on the phases of the written language.         First Stage: Old Egyptian (2500–2100 B.C.)     The earliest known hieroglyphic texts—written in approximately 3500 B.C.—are too brief to be classified clearly. By 2500 B.C., Egyptians were speaking what is today called Old Egyptian and writing it in both hieroglyphs and hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphs. They used this language to compose religious texts such as those inscribed in the pyramids of Unas and Pepy II, as well as the monumental biographies carved in tombs in Aswan. They also used Old Egyptian to write personal letters.         Second Stage: Middle Egyptian (2000 B.C.–A.D. 395)     Middle Egyptian was also written with hieroglyphs or in hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphs. Egyptologists regard Middle Egyptian as the classical form of the language because it continued to be used to write texts long after it had died as a spoken language. Ancient Egypt’s national epic poem, The Tale of Sinuhe, was composed in Middle Egyptian during Dynasty 12 and recopied by scribes for over one thousand years. In addition to verse and prose, scribes used Middle Egyptian to compose prayers, spells, historical narratives, and instructional treatises that Egyptologists have called wisdom literature. The last-known Middle Egyptian inscription was carved at the Philae Temple in A.D. 395.         Third Stage: Late Egyptian (1200–600 B.C.)     Evidence for spoken Late Egyptian begins in Dynasty 18, but the majority of Late Egyptian texts—consisting of prose stories—date to the Ramesside Period (Dynasties 19 and 20). Although Middle Egyptian still existed, the Egyptians recited love poetry and wrote letters, economic accounts, and even diaries in Late Egyptian, which was by then the language commonly spoken. In fact, some monumental inscriptions written in Middle Egyptian during the Ramesside Period contain phrases, spellings, or grammatical constructions in Late Egyptian. Due to its colloquial function, Late Egyptian was written mostly in hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphs.         Fourth Stage: Demotic (600 B.C.–2nd century A.D.)     Demotic, which developed out of vernacular Late Egyptian, was written with a very simplified sign list. Scribes used demotic to write popular stories about Egypt’s past, instructional treatises, business documents, religious texts, and official documents translated from Greek—the language that was used by Egypt’s Ptolemaic kings and Roman emperors.         Fifth Stage: Coptic (1st century–11th century A.D.)     The Coptic script was written in the Greek alphabet, with additional signs representing Egyptian sounds that did not exist in Greek. There were major Coptic translations of the New Testament, and the language has been strongly associated with Egyptian Christianity, but Coptic translations of the Hebrew Bible, of Gnostic and Hermetic religious tracts, and of Greek philosophy all attest to the variety of belief systems that existed in Egypt from roughly the first century A.D. until the Middle Ages.         Back to Introduction The Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing System African Roots of the Egyptian Language Five Forms of the King’s Name How Champollion Deciphered Hieroglyphs