This volume is the first to be devoted specifically to the study of lexical semantics in Ancient Egyptian. While much research has been dedicated to a wide range of grammatical issues in past decades, lexical semantics has rarely been treated in a systematic fashion. The papers collected here treat a range of semantic phenomena, from the lexical semantics of spatial expressions, to the problems of analyzing polyfunctionality and even to the semantics of the Egyptian writing system. The scope of these issues goes well beyond the individual 'word' or lexical item, as a number of papers address the semantics of syntactic constructions. Some authors call into question the distinction between lexicon and grammar, or analyze the lexical semantics of items usually considered 'grammatical' or 'function' words, such as discourse particles. This volume also spans a number of theoretical frameworks and methodologies that have not been prominent in Egyptian linguistics and philology, such as typologically-oriented semantic maps and other visual tools. The papers in this volume do not aim to define the 'state of the art,' but rather seek to stimulate the study of meaning in Ancient Egyptian, to point to innovative avenues for future research, and to engage in a broader dialogue between Egyptian linguistics and philology, on the one hand, and the research frameworks and agendas of general linguistics, on the other.

Lexical Semantics in Ancient Egyptian (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica) (English and French Edition)

History

Grossman, Eitan

Ancient Civilizations

Widmaier Verlag

The book provides a commentary on one of the best known poems from the Middle Kingdom, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, from c. 1840 BC. An introduction covers issues of composition and reception in the Middle Kingdom; language and imagery; naturalism, artifice and immediacy; cultural themes; and later and modern receptions. The commentary includes the text in transliteration and translation with a line by line commentary discussing points of philology, lexicography, style, intertext, context, meaning and possible emotional and aesthetic impact. The volume is intended to assist anyone wishing to read the poem in its original language, and is laid out with text and commentary on the same page to enable an integrated experience of reading, following the precedent of other academic commentaries on classic works of world literature. Figures are included to help embed the poem in its material culture and landscape. An index of words is also provided. The book complements the existing text edition of the poem and the new photographic publications of the main manuscripts by the author.

The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant: A Reader's Commentary (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica)

Literature & Fiction

Parkinson, R. B.

History & Criticism

A central issue of Egyptological research is the question of dating the original composition of religious or literary texts. Very prominent is a lively debate about the date of composition of a number of literary texts, traditionally dated to the Late First Intermediate Period or the Early Middle Kingdom but known only from New Kingdom manuscripts. Over the last years, several attempts have been made to date the production of some of these texts much closer to their first physical appearance. More recently the discussion has heated up considerably with contributions that argue for a New Kingdom origin of Merikare, Neferti, and Amenemhet-a reassessment based on conceptions of Egyptian cultural history or on linguistic analysis. On the other hand, there is an equally strong tendency to retain at least the early datings or to propose even earlier ones for some literary and many more religious texts. This volume presents both overviews and in-depth case studies of current Egyptological dating practices and methods. While giving the 'state of the art' of dating Egyptian literary texts, the book also addresses important methodological issues to provide a basis for future research.

Dating Egyptian Literary Texts (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica) (English, French and German Edition)

Moers, Gerald

The study addresses the dating of Middle Egyptian literary texts from the perspective that has merited the least attention so far, language. General discussions concern aspects of the linguistic situation in early/mid-second millennium BCE Egypt, the nature of the record in which the primary linguistic description is necessarily carried out, processes of textual alteration in the course of transmission, and the configurations of Middle Egyptian in literature. In the case of Middle Egyptian literary texts, the major strategy for dating consists in studying phenomena of written innovation and obsolescence in relevant registers in order to define upper and lower temporal bounds for a composition to be dated. In a complementary approach, not indexed on linguistic change, distinctive linguistic repertoires and phenomena of linguistic re-composition are directly targeted. Implications that spring from the proposed datings are outlined with a view on how these could affect the discussion of the cultural functions and of the historical development of Middle Egyptian literature. Beyond dating, the book is more broadly a study of the language of Middle Egyptian literature, of differences internal to this tradition, and of how it productively relates to other written discourses on linguistic levels as much as on semantic ones.

Linguistic Dating of Middle Egyptian Literary Texts: 'Dating Egyptian Literary Texts' G÷ttingen, 9-12 June 2010, Volume 2 (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica)

Stauder, Andras

Eines der in den Grammatiken uber die mittelagyptische Sprachstufe quantitativ am wenigsten berucksichtigten Textkorpora bilden die dokumentarischen Texte: Briefe, Vertrage, Administrativa, Listen etc. Einzig Spezialabhandlungen zitieren diese Texte haufiger, doch ist deren Schwerpunktsetzung zum einen recht begrenzt, zum anderen werden die untersuchten Phanomene in der Regel nicht als Charakteristika der dokumentarischen Texte behandelt. Die hier vorgelegte Arbeit mochte diese Lucken schliessen und verfolgt daher drei Hauptziele: (1) Die Dokumentation aller grammatischen und schriftsprachlichen Phanomene des genannten Textkorpus. (2) Die Beschreibung der charakteristischen Merkmale des niedrigsten schriftsprachlichen Registers "Dokumentarische Texte" einschliesslich eines synchronen Vergleichs mit der Sprachstufe "Mittelagyptisch", wie sie die Grammatiken skizzieren, und einer generellen Einordnung in die Sprachentwicklung. (3) Daruber hinaus ist diese Arbeit als grammatische Fundgrube und Belegsammlung fur die zukunftige Erforschung des Mittelagyptischen konzipiert. Inhaltlich setzt sich die Arbeit aus folgenden Teilen zusammen: Einleitung und Quellen ( 1-13); Schriftkonventionen und Schriftentwicklung ( 14-28); Morphologie und Wortsyntax ( 29-338); Satzsyntax und Erganzungen (Negationen; Tempus- und Modussystem; direkte und indirekte Rede) ( 339-404); ein umfassender Appendix zum Briefformular des Mittleren Reiches.

Grammatik der dokumentarischen Texte des Mittleren Reiches (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica) (German Edition)

Brose, Marc

Coptic, the latest phase of the Ancient Egyptian language, existed from beginning to end in a multiílingual space. The indigenous Egyptian language had been in contact with Greek - and other languages - from the first millennium BCE, as well as Arabic, since the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 CE. In effect, this is the earliest and best-attested situation of stable language contact in the ancient world. It is also a rich source for studies on lexical borrowing, since about 5000 loanwords from Greek and some 500 from Arabic form part of the lexicon of Coptic at various stages. These loanwords are documented in a wide variety of genres and registers, from the language of ítheology to that of science and everyday life. The focus of the volume is mainly lexical borrowing from Greek into Coptic, but other aspects will be treated as well, e.g., the sociolinguistic situation of Greek and Coptic, Coptic loanwords in Greek, Arabic loanwords in Coptic, and pre-Coptic evidence for lexical borrowing. A special focus will be on the sociolinguistic and functional aspects of lexical borrowing in Coptic.

Greek Influence on Egyptian-Coptic: Contact-Induced Change in an Ancient African Language (DDGLC Working Papers 1) (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica)

The grammar presents a comprehensive introduction to the Bohairic Coptic dialect. It is divided into 12 chapters covering the major features of the grammar and is augmented by three chapters with short introductions to Bohairic literature, indications of both time reckoning and measurements, as well as an additional chapter introducing patterns specific to the texts of Nitrian monasteries (or better, Sketis). As the grammar is intended for learners, students, and scholars as well as coptologists/egyptologists and linguists, almost all examples are extensively glossed. Furthermore, the book contains extensive annotated texts for reading from the Scripture as well as from literary and even some documentary texts, as well as a glossary to the texts.

Grammatik des Bohairischen (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica, 24) (German Edition)

Müller, Matthias

The Egyptian Root Lexicon presents the envisaged roots of the Egyptian words, hypothetically established on the basis of attested lexemes on obvious phonetic and semantic resemblance. As the etymological research in the field of Afro-Asiatic is not sufficiently advanced, the lexical roots are not set up on an etymological basis. The main part of the book contains the roots (numerically marked with DRID identifier) in alphabetic arrangement, with their subsequent lexemes marked with an identity number, the "ID," as created by the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA), of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. The roots section is followed by extensive indexes, including a lexeme index and an index of roots of Semitic origin. A selected bibliography concludes the work.

Egyptian Root Lexicon (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica, 25)

Reference

Satzinger, Helmut

Stefanović, Danijela

Foreign Language Study & Reference

"Transitivity and Aspect in Sahidic Coptic" consists of three studies united by the common topic of voice alternations in Sahidic. Having established that the Coptic verbal system is based on split causativity (for the term see Kulikov L.I., "Split causativity: remarks on correlations between transitivity, aspect, and tense"), the work introduces the concept of an aspect-transitivity grid, in which the unmarked infinitival form is ascribed the voice-aspect meaning according to the conjugation pattern it appears in. The work establishes a correlation between the morphosyntactic properties of verbs and their semantic properties, such as lexical aspect and agentivity. Chapter 2 explores the formal and semantic properties of the periphrastic circumstantial construction. Voice marking phenomena in Greek-origin verbs are examined in chapter 3. The results obtained in this study may be further used in language contact research, as well as in general and typological linguistics.

Transitivity and Aspect in Sahidic Coptic: Studies in the Morphosyntax of Native and Greek-origin Verbs (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica, 26)

Speransky, Nina

Hieroglyphic Inscriptions with historical-biographical content from the 18th dynasty are found continuously until the reign of Amenhotep III and thereafter frequently in the language of the Middle Kingdom, the "Classical Middle Egyptian". However, several grammatical surveys have brought forth noticeable deviations from this ideal, often motivated by the language progress. Furthermore, a recent larger-scale study recording not only the qualitative evidence, but also the quantitative side, did not exist. This contribution represents a pilot study on a sub-corpus of the inscriptions in question, which will serve as an initial reference study for future research on these texts. The corpus selected is the royal stelae up to and including Amenhotep III. The study is conducted on a set of grammatical key areas - verbal system, pronominal system, functional words, and in addition, outlines of the nouns, adjectives, numerals, phonology and lexicon. To conclude this study, an individual textual analysis with greater focus on parameters such as diachrony, register, genre and discourse type is added, as contrast to the general evidence.

Die Sprache Der Koniglichen Stelen Der 18 (Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica, 28) (German Edition)

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