Existing comment:
Writing:
A written form of Egyptian developed alongside the creation of a unified state around 1300 BC and must have been essential for the smooth functioning of the administrative and military apparatus of a far-flung empire.
Ancient Egyptian belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family, which also includes the Semitic and African language spoken in antiquity and today. The earliest form of Egyptian writing is hieroglyphic, a term derived from a Greek word that is an almost literal translation of the Egyptian word medu-netjer, meaning "words of god." Each glyph (symbol) in this script is based on a natural form, such as an animal or plant. Around 2500 BC, a cursive form of writing hieroglyphs arose called hieratic script, which evolved into demotic script around 700 BC. All three scripts use a combination of phonetic signs to indicate the sounds that comprise a word and determinative signs that have no sound value but mark both where a word ends (Egyptian had no punctuation marks) and, more importantly, modify the meaning of a word. |