Hi, I’m Luka, some of you may know me from around; I am not much of a presenter, nor speaker

though, however showmanship in science is not something I aspire for anyways.

Today, I shall be presenting to you a topic which is very close to my heart, obviously, and that is
AEL.
One of the main reasons why I find AEL so tremendously exciting and peerless a phenomenon is
the fact that it has three millennia of direct, uninterrupted written tradition. It is a vast and
intimidating subject, however fear not, I will be your Virgil on this journey.
But before I venture into that, I am going to explain the linguistic span of Ancient Egyptian
literature in plain and simple terms.
Firstly, here’s the conventional Egyptological chronology I am going to be using in this
presentation, I’m sure this is something well known to the most of us, archaeologists at least.
1. Archaic Egyptian – the oldest stage of AE language attested from the invention of
writing during the IV millennium, throughout the first two Dynasties.
2. Old Egyptian – the language of the bureaucracy, religion and first written literature
during the Old Kingdom.
3. Middle Egyptian – the classical phase of AE, that first appeared as a spoken language
during the First Intermediate, and peaked during the Middle Kingdom; when it ceased to
be spoken, it was used in written form as a liturgical language until the end of Antiquity.
4. New Egyptian – appeared somewhere around the 18th Dynasty, until the 7th century BC.
5. Demotic – late stage of AE written in new, eponymous script from the 7th c. BCE until
the 1st c. BCE.
6. Coptic – the last spoken and written stage of AE, written in modified form of the Greek
alphabet, used from the 1st c. BCE, through the Middle ages, possibly until the 18th
century. Coptic is still used as a liturgical language of the Coptic church.
Ancient Egyptian is one of the oldest and longest documented languages of mankind: from its
oldest (Archaic Egyptian) to its most recent phase (Coptic), Ancient Egyptian remained in
productive written use for more than four millennia - from about 3000 BCE to the Middle Ages.
Egyptologist still are not certain when exactly did Coptic cease to be spoken, whether the 15th, or
maybe even 18th century.
In Egyptology we differentiate four types of scripts used for different linguistic stages of AE
language.
When writing first appeared in Egypt, at the very beginning of the dynastic age, its use was
limited to the briefest notations designed to identify a person or a place, an event or a possession.
An aura of magic surrounded the art which was said to derive from the gods.
As for the hieroglyphs, one of the most emblematic symbols of Ancient Egyptian civilization,
one could argue about their origin during the Naqada period; in the mid '90s, during the
excavations of the necropolis area in pre-dynastic Abydos, German archaeologists have
discovered so-called ’labels’ with what seems to be the earliest written stage of Ancient
Egyptian. These are to be dated around the year 3200, while some Egyptologists even insist on
an earlier date, around 3500. The tomb in all probability belonged to one of the Scorpion kings
of the Dynasty 0.
Already by the time of the first Dynasty of Naqada, the script was being used for brief
inscriptions, often of chronological nature, dealing with the major events taking place annually
during the reign of certain early dynastic rulers. One can observe that very early in the state
formation of the dynastic Egypt writing became an integral part of the royal iconography of
power. Longer inscriptions from the Old Kingdom’s Third dynasty mark the beginning of the
historical period in Egypt. The symbolic importance of the hieroglyphs can be observed through
their lapidary medium, in the idea of the fixed, permanent and possibly eternal divine image
made in stone.
While the hieroglyphs were primarily a monumental script reserved for the stone medium, during
the Old Kingdom, and possibly even earlier a need was born for administratively friendlier script
– which was the beginning of the hieratic writing. Around 80% of all the written documents from
Ancient Egypt are written in this script, on papyri, wood, ostraca. The most common writing
tools were brushes. As for the papyrus use, the oldest known blank piece of papyrus is dated to
the reign of king Den (Dynasty 1), found in Saqqara, belonging to his vizier; the oldest written
papyri known at the moment, are the ones from the Dynasty 4 king Khufu, from Wadi el-Yarf
port.
The language of the Old Kingdom and of the First Intermediate Period (3000-2000 BCE) was
Old Egyptian.
The main documents of this stage of the language are the religious corpus of the Pyramid Texts
and a sizeable number of so-called Autobiographies, which are accounts of individual
achievements inscribed on the external walls of the rock tombs of the admininistrative elite. One
of the most important theological texts from Ancient Egypt, the Memphite theology, preserved
on so-called ‘Shabaka stone’ is also dated to the epoch of Old Kingdom.
The Pyramid Texts are carved on the walls of the sarcophagus chambers and adjoining rooms
and corridors that together form the royal burial suites inside the pyramids of Saqqara. They
were discovered in 1881 in five of the Saqqara pyramids ; those of Unas, the last king of the 5th
Dynasty, and of Kings Teti, Pepi I , Mernere, and Pepi II , the principal kings of the Sixth
Dynasty. They stand at the beginning of Egyptian literature, when the writing of continuous text
was a novelty. Taken together they constitute a corpus of incantations, the purpose of which is to
promote the resurrection, well-being of the deceased kings and their ascent to the sky. The total
of these spells is 759. The principal stages of king’s dramatic conquest of eternal life are: the
awakening in the tomb from the sleep of death; the ascent to the sky; and the admission to the
company of the immortal gods.

The Cannibal Hymn is one of a group of related spells that appear only in the two earliest
pyramids with texts, those of Unas and Teti. The spells then drop out of the regular corpus.
What is particularly peculiar and unique about this hymn is the motive of cannibalism:
the king is not submissive to the gods, rather he threatens them and devours them: the gods are
hunted down, lassoed, bound, and slaughtered like wild cattle, that the king may devour their
substance, and especially their internal organs, like the heart where the intelligence had its seat,
in the belief that he might thus absorb and appropriate their qualities and powers.
The text known as the “Memphite Theology” was inscribed on a rectangular slab of black granite
during the reign of the 25th-Dynasty pharaoh Shabaka (ca. 715-701 B.C.) for erection in the
temple of Ptah in Memphis. The middle portion of the text has been almost completely
obliterated through later reuse as a millstone.
Shabaka’s dedicatory inscription indicates that the stone was carved to perpetuate the text of an
older document, written on worm-eaten papyrus or leather.
The text is a work of the Old Kingdom, considering the prominence of Memphis, and archaic
language that resembles that of the Pyramid Texts. The contents are following:

(1) Ptah is the king of Egypt and the unifier of the land.
(2) Memphis is the capital of Egypt and the hinge of Upper and Lower Egypt.
(3) Ptah is also the supreme god and the creator of the world.

And here I would like to share with you a passage from the text that gives us the clear picture
why this is one of the intellectually most sophisticated texts we have from Ancient Egypt.
The power of creative speech was most often associated with the god Ptah, the patron deity of
Memphis. The creation of the world was an act of “magic”. In ancient Egypt, magic meant
essentially the ability to make things happen by indirect means. Ptah’s act of creation is
connected to the two components – sj3 (perception) and hw (annunciation). Perception is the
ability to see what needs to be done, and annunciation is the power to make it happen through
speech. Ptah perceived the world in his heart and brought it about by announcing his perception.
This understanding of the creation as an act of perception and speech that lies behind the
Memphite theology is quite similar to the one that underlies the story of creation in the Bible:
God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light [annunciation].
God saw the light, that it was good [perception]. (Gen. I:3-4)
I would also like to point out that “every divine speech” (mdw.w ntr nb) mentioned in the text is
also an Ancient Egyptian name for the hieroglyphic writing, which to the Egyptian mind was a
means for capturing reality through symbols. That in effect means that all creation is a
hieroglyphic text of the creator’s original concept: the same intellectual principle has produced
everything.
Middle Egyptian was used as a spoken and written language from the Middle Kingdom to the
end of the Dynasty XVIII (2000-1300 BCE). This is the classical language of Egyptian literature,
conveyed in a variety of texts, classified according to four main genres:
(1) Funerary literature (Coffin texts) inscribed on the sarcophagi of the admininistrative
elite;
(2) Instructions i.e. wisdom texts normally addressed from a father to a son, which
conveyed the educational and professional expectations of Egyptian society. The most
renowned examples are the "Instructions of the Ptahhotep" and the "Instructions for
Merikare." Some of these moral texts, such as the "Admonitions of Ipu-Wer," are in fact
philosophical discussions on the state of the country taking as a point of departure the
political evolution from the Old to the Middle Kingdom, referred to as First Intermediate
Period.
(3) Tales which are narratives relating adventures of a specific hero and representing the
vehicle of individual, as opposed to societal concerns. The most famous specimens of this
genre are the "Tale of Sinuhe“, "Eloquent Peasant”, and the "Shipwrecked Sailor.“
(4) Hymns, poetical texts with religious contents, written in praise of a god or of the king.
Famous examples are provided by the "Hymn to the Nile“ and by the cycle of "Hymns to King
Sesostris“.
(a) New Egyptian (1300-700 BCE), the language of written records from the second part of the
New Kingdom. It primarily conveys the rich entertainment literature of Dynasty XIX, consisting
of wisdom and narrative texts, for example the "Tale of the Two Brothers," the "Tale of
Wenarnun,“ but also of some new literary genres, such as mythological tales or love poetry.
(b) Demotic (7th century BCE to 5th century CE), the language of administration and literature
during the Late Period. While grammatically closely akin to Late Egyptian, it differs from it
radically in its graphic system. Important texts in Demotic are the narrative cycles of Setne-
Khaemwase and the instructions of Papyrus Onkhsheshonqi.
(c) Coptic (1st century BCE to 18th century CE) is the language of Christian Egypt, written in a
variety of Greek alphabet with the addition of six or seven Demotic signs to indicate Egyptian
phonemes absent from Greek. As a spoken, and gradually also as a written language, Coptic was
superseded by Arabic from the ninth century onward, but it survives to the present time as the
liturgical language of the Christian church of Egypt.