Old Egyptian is the stage of the Egyptian language spoken from 2600 BC to 2000 BC during the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period. The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. Tomb walls of elite Egyptians from this period bear autobiographical writings representing Old Egyptian. One of its distinguishing characteristics is the tripling of ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language.
Famous quotes containing the words egyptian and/or language:
“What was I saying? An Egyptian king
Once touched long fingers, which are not anything.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Now stamp the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice,
A Bible-leaved of all the written woods
Strip to this tree: a rocking alphabet,
Genesis in the root, the scarecrow word,
And one light’s language in the book of trees.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)