język: Ancient Egyptian literature

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Ancient Egyptian literature was written with the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature. Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kin…

Evidence: 72 • authority: 72

The Egyptian language, or ancient Egyptian (r n kmt; 'speech of Egypt'), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family that was spoken in Egypt. It is one of the earliest known written languages, first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC, and the longest-attested human language with a written record spanning over 5,000 years. Its classical form, known as "Middle Egyptian," was the vernacular language of the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt, and remained the literary language of Egypt until its Christianisation during the Roman period. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were deciphered in the early 19th century. By the time…

Evidence: 52 • authority: 80

Early writing, archaic states and nascent administration: ancient Egypt in context (late 4th-early 3rd millennium BC)

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (, HY-roh-glifs) or hieroglyphics were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramai…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

Hieratic (; Ancient Greek: ἱερατικά, romanized: hieratiká, lit. 'priestly') is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus. Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphs. The two were indistinct during the Old Kingdom but separated into different writing systems during the First Intermediate Period.

Evidence: 27 • authority: 88

Upper Egypt before the New Kingdom. The time between the Middle and the New Kingdoms is less well-defined than the preceding and succeeding periods of ancient Egypt in terms of its political, administrative, and economic structure. After the decline of the Middle Kingdom central state, the so-called Second Intermediate Period is characterized by a parceling of Egypt’s territory into a number of local or regional centers of power. This decentralization also resulted in an apparent reduction of textual and other sources. The chapter focuses on political and historical developments during the later phase of the Second Intermediate Period, corresponding to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Dynastie…

Evidence: 20 • authority: 72

The following outline is provided as an overview of a topical guide to ancient Egypt: Ancient Egypt – ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that facilitated the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics; a practical and effective system of medicine; irrigation systems a…