Mdw Ntr

Recent Discoveries

Recent discoveries by Gunter Dreyer the director of the German Archaeological Institute suggest that Mdw Ntr is not only the oldest attested African language but very well may be the oldest attested written script in the world. Using writing samples from a cemetery area near Abydos, known as the “Mother of Pots” because of the numerous amounts of pottery discovered there, Dreyer has carbon dated with certainty these writings to between 3300 and 3200 B.C.E., which is some 5,300 years ago. Mdw Ntr first appeared in writing shortly before 4000 B.C.E. and remained in active use until the 11th century, making it the longest continually used language in the world. Beginning with the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 C.E., Arabic gradually replaced Egyptian as the dominant language in Egypt. Like Latin, Egyptian is considered a dead language, and it can only be studied in writing, though it is still spoken in the rituals of the old Egyptian Christian community called the Coptic Church and among members of the Ausar Auset, a religious group begun by the Panamanian philosopher Shekem ur Shekhem.

The History of Mdw Ntr

Most scholars classify Mdw Ntr history into five major phases.

• 1.
  Old Egyptian is the name given to the oldest known phase of the language. While Egyptian writing existed before 3000 B.C.E., the early inscriptions are only of labels and names. Old Egyptian proper is dated from approximately 2600 B.C.E., when the first connected texts appeared. This phase of the language lasted until around 2100 B.C.E.
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• 2.
  Middle Egyptian, sometimes called Classical Egyptian, is closely related to the Old Egyptian. It first appeared in writing around 2100 B.C.E. and survived as a spoken language for some 500 years, but it has remained the standard hieroglyphic language for the rest of Egyptian history. Middle Egyptian is the phase of the language that is most often taught at universities and in language programs.
• 3.
  Late Egyptian began to replace Middle Egyptian as the spoken language after 1600 B.C.E., and it remained in use until about 600 B.C.E. Though descended from Old and Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian differed substantially from the earliest phase of the language, particular in grammar. Traces of Late Egyptian can be found in texts earlier than 1600 B.C.E., but it did not appear as a full written language until after 1300 B.C.E.
• 4.
  Demotic developed out of late Egyptian. The vernacular successor to Late Egyptian, it first appeared around 650 B.C.E. and survived until the 5th century C.E.
• 5.
  Coptic is the name given to the final phase of Egyptian, which is closely related to Demotic. It appeared at the end of the 1st century C.E., and it was spoken for nearly a thousand years. The last known texts written by native speakers of Coptic date to the 11th century. This is the only stage of the language in which the vocalic structure is known and distinct dialects are recognized.

When classifying ancient Kemetic language genetically, most scholars adhere to the linguistic classification set forth by Joseph Greenberg in his work Studies in African Linguistic Classification. It was Greenberg who suggested the name Afro-Asiatic to replace the entrenched and racially charged name Hamito-Semitic. While the name Hamito-Semitic was changed, the underlying racial theory that implied that the original speakers of these languages were Caucasian or black-skinned whites is still applied erroneously to Afro-Asiatic. Currently, this linguistic family consists of six branches: Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian-Hebrew-Arabic, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However, the science of historical linguistics has not yet been able to satisfactorily reconstruct this language family.

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