Late Egyptian language
| Late Egyptian | |
|---|---|
| Region | Ancient Egypt |
| Era | ca. 1350-700 BC, when it evolved into Demotic |
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Afroasiatic
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Early forms
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Late Egyptian is the stage of the Egyptian language that was written by the time of the New Kingdom of Egypt around 1350 BC – the Amarna Period. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt and later. Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as a literary language.
Late Egyptian is not descended directly from Middle Egyptian, which was based on a different dialect.
Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature, comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun, the love poems of the Chester–Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Any. Instructions became a popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. It was also the language of New Kingdom administration.
Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the one between Middle and Old Egyptian: from being a synthetic it became an analytic language. Their relationship has been described as being similar to that of Latin and Italian.
Hieroglyphic orthography saw an enormous expansion of its graphemic inventory between the Late Period and the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
Middle Egyptian had a renaissance after the Third Intermediate Period (1070-664 BCE), when it was often used in hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian.
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