THE LANGUAGE.]
EGYPTOLOGY 729 Nouns. hears”; “ &dmw &n, “ the king hears.” It is varied by the addiTwo genders, m. (ending w, or nothing), f. (ending t). Three tion of particles, &c., n, yn, hr, tw, thus :— numbers: singular, dual (m. wy, f. ty, gradually became obsolete), &dm-f, “he hears”; kdm-vj-f, “he is heard” (pi. kdm-yy-M plural (m. w ; f. wt). No case-endings are recognizable, but con- “they are heard”); Mm-tw-f, “he is heard”; kdm-n-f, “he struct forms—to judge by Coptic—were in use. Masculine and heard”; klrn-n-tvj-f, “he was heard”; also, kdm-yn-f, kdm-hr-f, feminine nouns of instrument or material are formed from verbal kdm-k'-f. Each form has special uses, generally difficult to define! roots by prefixing wi ; e.g.} m.sdm.t, “ stibium,’1 from sdm, ‘‘paint &dm-f seems rather to be imperfect, klm-n-f perfect, and generally the eye. Substantives and adjectives are formed from substan- to express the past. Later, bdm-f is ordinarily expressed by peritives and prepositions by the addition of y in the masculine; phrases ; but by the loss of n, kdm-n-f became itself sdm-f, which o.g., n.t, “city, nt.y, “belonging to a city,” “citizen”; hr is the ordinary past in demotic. Coptic preserves kdm-f forms of “upon,” hr.y (f. hr.t; pi. hr.w), “upper.” This is not unlike many verbs in its causative (e.g., TAIJljOq “cause him to live,” the Semitic nisbe ending iy, ay {e.g., Ar. beled, “city,” belcdi, belonging to a city ). Adjectives follow the nouns they qualify. from Egyptian dy.t 'nh-f), and, in its periphrastic conjugation, the same forms of wn, “be,” and yry, “do.” With &dm-f (sedmo-f) was a more emphatic form (e&domef), at any rate in the weak Numerals. 1, w ; 2, S?i; 3, hmt; 4, fdw; 5, dw'; 6, sys; 7, s/& ; 8, hmn ; verbs. The above, with the relative forms mentioned below, are sup9, psd ; 10, mt. 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (?) resemble Semitic numerals. 20 posed by Erman to be derived from the participle, which is placed and 30 (mb) had special names ; 40-90 were named as if plurals first for emphasis: thus, kdm.w tin, “hearing is the king”; of the units 4-9, as in Semitic. 100, Mt; 1000, K : 10 000 zb' • sdm-fy, “hearing he is.” This Egyptian paraphrase of 100,000, hfnw. - > > > * Semiticfor is just like the Irish paraphrase of English, “ It is hearing he is.” ° Verbs. The imperative shows no ending in the singular ; in the plural it The forms observable in hieroglyphic writing lead to the followhas y, and later w ; cf. Semitic imperative. ing classification:— The infinitive is of special importance on account of its being Stuong Verbs. Biliteral i Often showing traces of an original preserved very fully in Coptic. It is generally of masculine form, in. inf. ; in early times very but feminine in m. inf. (as in Semitic), and in causatives of biliterals. rare. Triliteral There are relative forms of kdm-f and idm-nf, respectively Very numerous. ( Generally formed by reduplication. klm.w-f (masc.), kdm.t-n-f (fem.), &c. They are used when the is the object of the relative sentence, or has any other Quadriliteral ] P lMe Egyptian they were no relative position than the subject. Thus kdm.t-f may mean “she whom Quinqueliteral ] ^“Slhe ^0? ™ he hears,” “she who[se praises] he hears,” “she [to] whom he hears [someone speaking],” &c. There are close analogies between l “do.” Weak Verbs, ii. geminatse Properly triliterals, but, with the the function of the relative particles in Egyptian and Semitic ; and 2nd or 3rd radical alike, these the Berber languages possess a relative form of the verb. Participles.—These are active and passive, perfect and impercoalesced in many forms where no vowel intervened, and gave fect, in the old language, but all are replaced by periphrases in the word the appearance of a Coptic. Verbal Adjectives.—There is a peculiar formation, klm-ty-fy, “he biliteral. in. gem who shall hear,” probably meaning originally “he is a hearer,” Rare. in. inf. Numerous, m. w, and in. y sdm.ty being an adjective in y formed from a feminine (t) form were unified early. Some of the infinitive, which is occasionally found even in triliteral very common verbs, “do,” verbs; the endings are: sing., masc. ty-fy, fem. ty-ky; pi., “give,” “come,” “bring” masc. ty-M, fem. ty-kt. It is found only in Old Egyptian. are irregular. Particles.—There seems to be no special formation for adverbs, iv. inf. Partly derived from adjectival and little use is made of adverbial expressions. Prepositions, formations in y, from nouns and simple and compound, are numerous. Some of the commonest infinitives: — e.g., i. yp, inf. simple propositions are n “for,” r “to,” m “in, from,” hr kypt; adj. Sypty ; verb (4 lit.), “ upom” A few enclitic conjunctions exist, but they are indefinite m meaning—kwt a vague “but,” grt a vague “moreover,” &c. kypty. . 9°ptic presents a remarkable contrast to Egyptian in the preMany verbs with weak consonants—ly, lw, n. inf. and cision of its periphrastic conjugation. There are two present those with ss are particularly difficult to trace accurately, owinsr tenses, an imperfect, two perfects, a pluperfect, a present and a to defective writing. ° past frequentative, and three futures besides future perfect; there It seems that all the above classes may be divided into two main are also conjunctive and optative forms. The negatives of some of groups, according to the form of the infinitive :—with masculine infinitive the strong triliteral type, and with feminine infinitive the these are expressed by special prefixes. The gradual growth of these new forms can be traced through all the stages of Egyptian. type ol the in. mf. The former group includes all except m. inf. iv. inr., and the causative of the biliterals, which belong to the Throughout the history of the language we note a tendency to periphrasis and pleonasm ; but there was no great advance towards second group. ° before demotic. In demotic there are distinguishable It is probable that the verb had a special form denoting condi- precision a present tense, imperfect, perfect, frequentative, future, future tion, as in Arabic. There was a causative form prefixing L and perfect, conjunctive, and optative ; also present, past, and future traces of forms resembling Piel and Niphal are observed. Some &c. The passive was extinct before demotic ; demotic roots are reduplicated wholly or in part with a frequentative negatives, and Coptic express it, clumsily it must be confessed, by an immeaning, and there are traces of gemination of radicals. personal “they,” e.g., “they bore him”, stands for “he was Pseudo-Participle.—In ymy early texts this is the past indicative, born.” nut more commonly it is used in sentences such as, gm-n-f wy It is worth noting how, in other departments besides the verb, .kwy,' he found me I stood,” i.e., “he found me standing.” the Egyptian language was far better adapted to practical ends during The indicative use was soon given up and the pseudo-participle was and the period of the Deltaic dynasties (XXII.-XXX.) than employed only as predicate, especially indicating a state ; e.g., ntr.t ever after it was before. It was both simplified and enriched. The inthe goddess goes”; yw-k v:dty, “ thou art prosperous. ” flections rapidly disappeared, and little was left of the distinctions The endings were almost entirely lost in New Egyptian. For earlyJ between masculine and feminine, singular dual and plural—except times they stand thus in the pronouns. The dual number had been given up entirely at Sing. 3. masc. y, late w. Dual wyy. PI. w. an earlier date. The pronouns, both personal and demonstrative, fern. ty. tyyv). ty. retained their forms very fully. As prefixes, suffixes, and articles, 2. masc. ty. tywny. they, together with some auxiliary verbs, provided the principal fem. ty. mechanism of the renovated language. An abundant supply of useful adverbs was gradually accumulated, as well as conjunctions, !• c. kwy. wyn. so far as the functions of the latter were not already performed by The pseudo-participle seems, by its inflection, to have been the the verbal prefixes. These great improvements in the language perfect ol the original Semitic conjugation. The simplest form correspond to great changes in the economic condition of the being that of the 3rd person, it is best arranged like the corre- country ; they were the result of active trade and constant intersponding tense in Semitic grammars, beginning with that person, course of all classes of Egyptians with foreigners from Europe ihere is no trace of the Semitic imperfect in Egyptian. The ordi- and Asia. Probably the best stage of Egyptian speech was that nary conjugation is formed quite differently. The verbal stem which immediately preceded Though Coptic is here and is here followed by the subject-suffix or substantive—&dm-f, “he there more exactly expressive Coptic. than the best demotic, it was spoilt S. III.— 92
