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. - 1 - 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. - II - 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 - I - 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. -2 - 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