The Stele of Kuʀi - Ancient Egyptian Spoken

* “embalmment-ium“ ~ Shorthand for “Place of embalmment“ This is my casual, non-professionally informed, attempted reconstruction of an Old Kingdom memorial stele of an Ancient Egyptian policeman *Kuʀi from the 11th dynasty, (c. 2000 BCE) Here I don’t use Egyptological pronunciation, which typically inserts “e“ between consonants as placeholders, or infers other vowels according to arbitrary conventions. These likely don’t correspond to how the ancient pronunciation might’ve actually been like. Since hieroglyphic Egyptian was a logoconsonantal script, the majority of vowels are not recorded, so the vowel values of the pre-Coptic stages of Egyptian are anyone’s guess. For many words, I just guessed the vowels based on my own esoteric reading method. It shouldn’t be seen as authoritative. I also referred to the Ancient Egyptian vocalization project to inform my guesses: Note how Egyptological pronunciation reads the soul as “ka.“ The Ancient Egyptian Vocalization Project, however, reconstructs it as “kuʀ,“ with an uvular trill. This is important, since instead of “Kay,“ I try to reconstruct the policeman’s name as “Kuʀi.“ For the Egyptological transliteration I variously interpret the following (with IPA symbols): ȝ - */a, l, ʁ, ʀ/ ỉ - */a, i, ʲa, ʲi, aʲ iʲ/ = - */a/ z - */ts s sˤ/ ṯ - */c/ ḏ - */ɟ/ The AEVP relies on Coptic, Akkadian, and other outside attestations to infer older Egyptian vowel qualities. Moreover, I looked at Sergei Starostin’s Afro-Asiatic database did a bit of cross-comparison between Semitic and Chadic forms to make guesses for related forms in Egyptian. Starostin’s work is often treated with heavy skepticism, but I still found it useful for cross-comparing Afro-Asiatic languages. (e.g. PAA *kum “black“ thus I’d guess “Kumat“ for the name of Egypt in Egyptian, (not “Kemet“ with arbitrary Egyptological e’s inserted)). While it is not professional practice to assume that PAA vowels would necessarily be 100% preserved in a daughter language like Egyptian, I didn’t hold myself to any strict diachronic standards since this is a casual video. Old Egyptian likely had a 3-vowel system of /i a u/, as in Classical Arabic. However, Egyptian also likely had /l/, yet it overlaps with /n/ and /r/ in the writing system. Due to this confusion, I pronounce them mostly as just /n/ and /r/ in my interpretation when there perhaps should be more /l/ in there. e.g. The preposition “to (the) venerable“ might’ve had /l/, /li jamaχu/, yet I pronounce it /ni jamaχu/ due to this uncertainty. ------------------------------------ Transliterated text: ḥtp-dỉ-nsw ỉnpw tpỉ-ḏw=f ỉmỉ-wt nb-tȝ-ḏsr prt-ḫrw tȝ ḥnqt ḫȝ (m) kȝ ȝpd n ỉmȝḫw ỉmỉ-rȝ nww-ḫȝswt ỉmỉ-rȝ smywt-ỉmntt Bšt sȝ kȝy mȝˁ-ḫrw ḏd(=f) ỉnk nḏs n ḥw-nỉ-ḥr ḥȝt mšˁ hrw qsnt ḥssw nb=f wpṯf pḥ.n=ỉ wḥȝt-ỉmntt ḏˁr.n=ỉ wȝwṯ =s nbt ỉn.n=ỉ wtḫw gm.n=ỉ ỉm=s mšˁ wḏȝ nn nhw=f swḏt.n=ỉ ỉỉ m ḥtp rdỉ.n wỉ nb=ỉ m sȝ=sn m rwḏ(w)=f n ˁq-ỉb=f n mnḫ n ỉrr=ỉ wpt n nb=ỉ ḥsw ỉmȝḫy ḳȝy mȝˁ-ḫrw Note the absence of the majority of the vowel data. ------------------------------------ I’ve never taken any Egyptian language classes, so my understanding is fragmentary, limited, and not in accord with established conventions. I do however notice typical Afro-Asiatic features in Egyptian: - The “construct state,“ placing two nouns side by side, where the following noun possesses the former. - Causative s - Feminine suffix -t - Consonantal root systems. While the Semitic languages usually have just triconsonantal roots, Egyptian had those in addition to biconsonantal and monoconsonantal roots as well, (and even as many as five consonants, but more rarely). PAA likely had similar variation, but the Semitic languages instead developed an emphasis on triconsonantal roots. Thus, Egyptian is perhaps more archaic in that respect.