This cowroid seal amulet, shaped like a cowrie shell, was discovered in a foundation deposit associated with Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. The base is inscribed with Hatshepsut’s personal name, Hatshepsut (“foremost of noblewomen”), linked to the title God’s Wife. After a brief period of experimentation, her formal portraits were combined with kingly (male) regalia.
During the 1926-1927 dig season, 299 scarab amulets and stamp seals were discovered near the eastern wall of the temple. Scarabs were popular amulets and were considered symbols of regeneration and rebirth. The mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, built during her reign in the 15th century B.C., was designed by Hatshepsut’s steward and confidante Senenmut, who was also tutor to Neferu-Ra and possibly Hatshepsut’s lover.
Hatshepsut oversaw ambitious building projects, including the Temple of Deir el-Bahri, as a rare Egyptian female pharaoh. In many statues and carvings, Hatshepsut is depicted wearing the traditional attire of male pharaohs, including a false beard, which symbolized her pharaonic power. The mortuary temple closely resembled the classical Greek architecture of 1,000 years later.
The cowrie-shaped amulet is inscribed with Hatshepsut’s personal name, meaning “foremost of noblewomen”. It has a vertically arranged, left reading bottom inscription framed by an oval line. An Egyptian sorcerer crafted a mystical amulet for his queen, Hatshepsut, declaring that it contained the power of the goddess Isis herself.
In conclusion, this cowroid seal amulet, found in a foundation deposit associated with Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri, is a significant example of the popularity of scarabs as symbols of regeneration and rebirth.
📹 What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like – and how we know
How did Egyptians pronounce the language behind the hieroglyphs? Subscribe for more: …
What did Hatshepsut look like?
In ancient Egyptian iconography, the pharaoh Hatshepsut is depicted with a feminine figure with an oval face, soft eyebrows, and bosoms. However, these characteristics were subsequently erased as she became a male pharaoh with a flat chest. Furthermore, her art incorporates the use of color and shapes.
Did Hatshepsut marry her brother?
Hatshepsut, the elder daughter of 18th-dynasty king Thutmose I and his consort Ahmose, was married to her half-brother Thutmose II, son of the lady Mutnofret. After the premature death of three of Mutnofret’s older sons, Thutmose II inherited the throne, with Hatshepsut as his consort. Hatshepsut had one daughter, Neferure, but no son. When her husband died in 1479, Thutmose III was born to Isis, a lesser harem queen. Hatshepsut acted as regent for Thutmose III, and by the end of his seventh regnal year, she had been crowned king and adopted a full royal titulary.
Hatshepsut’s formal portraits began to show her with a male body, wearing traditional regalia. This was an attempt to pass herself off as a man, as Egyptian artistic convention showed things as they should be. Hatshepsut never explained why she took the throne or how she persuaded Egypt’s elite to accept her new position. However, her success was largely due to a group of loyal officials, many of whom were handpicked, who controlled key positions in her government. Some observers have suggested that Hatshepsut and Senenmut may have been lovers, but there is no evidence to support this claim.
How did Hatshepsut treat her people?
Hatshepsut, along with Punt’s chief, Perehu, embarked on a voyage with five boats, demonstrating her power as a Pharaoh. She fed both her people and those of Punt with Egyptian food, showcasing the power of Amun-Re. Egypt also gifted Punt a few weapons and trinkets, fostering a stronger connection between the two nations. This encouraged the people of Punt to embark on a journey with the god Amun-Re and protect their land from evil.
Upon returning from the voyage, Hatshepsut displayed her new goods in her Mortuary Temple, symbolizing her dominance over another country. She designed a courtyard to plant the thirty-one incense trees gifted by the Land of Punt, symbolizing her dominance over Egypt. This project gained even more respect from her own people.
Hatshepsut’s other significant project during her reign was her Mortuary Temple. In the 18th dynasty, the government discovered that tombs from previous Pharaohs had been robbed. To prevent this, Hatshepsut broke the tradition of being buried in a pyramid and created her Mortuary Temple at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings.
How did Hatshepsut change her image?
Hatshepsut, a powerful pharaoh, aimed to portray herself as a man in pictures and replace her old courtiers with new ones. However, she was concerned about her position and her army, led by her stepson Tuthmosis. She had to decide whether to lead the army into battle and lose power, or if she won and Tuthmosis received all the credit. Hatshepsut devised a win-win solution by ordering the army to set off on a trading expedition to Punt, a land where no Egyptian had been for over 500 years. This decision allowed her to maintain her power and avoid potential consequences.
What does Hatshepsut look like?
In ancient Egyptian iconography, the pharaoh Hatshepsut is depicted with a feminine figure with an oval face, soft eyebrows, and bosoms. However, these characteristics were subsequently erased as she became a male pharaoh with a flat chest. Furthermore, her art incorporates the use of color and shapes.
What jewelry did Hatshepsut wear?
The woman is adorned with a broad collar necklace, cuff bracelets, and wide anklets, with an enigmatic amulet suspended around her neck on a string of tubular beads. The collection includes colossal kneeling statues from the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. The woman’s geographical context encompasses Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, Senenmut Quarry, and the MMA excavations conducted between 1928 and 1930.
What did Hatshepsut wear?
Maatkare Hatshepsut, the inaugural female pharaoh of Egypt, was depicted wearing traditional female attire and accessories, including the nemes crown and a black, pointed false beard. Subsequently, her statuary depicted her wearing a short male kilt and a bare chest, seated on a throne. The use of color in ancient Egyptian art is not merely an aesthetic device; rather, it conveys significant meanings.
Who was the first female Pharaoh?
The first female pharaoh, Menom Hat III, presided over Egypt during the Middle Kingdom Period, which was a period of great prosperity and advancement for the country.
What is Hatshepsut holding in her hands?
Hatshepsut, a male king from Upper Egypt, was depicted in a terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri with at least ten over life-sized kneeling statues. These statues, displaying her wearing a kilt, a false beard, and either the white crown of Upper Egypt or the nemes-headcloth, were placed along the processional way towards the temple’s main sanctuary during a yearly festival. The statues were likely positioned on the temple’s second terrace.
The statue represents Hatshepsut wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, possibly placed on the southern side of the processional way. She is said to be offering fresh plants to Amun on the base. On the back pillar, she is identified by her Horus name, Wosretkau, written in a serekh.
In 1930, the Museum’s Egyptian Expedition found body fragments of the statue buried in the “Hatshepsut Hole. The head had been found and taken to Berlin by Egyptologist Richard Lepsius eighty years earlier. The pieces of the statue were reunited in an exchange organized by Herbert Winlock, director of the Museum’s excavations at Thebes.
📹 Hatshepsut by David Pepper Jan 2022
Hatshepsut, the “Wonder Woman” of Ancient Egypt, was a powerful leader and a great builder. Her achievements were largely …
As an American of Mexican descent, I had the privilege of working in Egypt for almost 6 years, 2004-2009. I picked up the Egyptian-Arabic dialogue fairly easily. I love this dialect. It is different than Saudi or UAE dialect and I was called out for it when I was in those places. They knew ride away that I was speaking in the Egyptian dialect. Some would call me the Egyptian even though I am Mexican American. I miss Egypt, the people, the culture, and the food. Egypt was magical to me and my family.
I just loved this so much. As an Ancient-Egyptophile from since I was a little boy (and I’m 72 now), this was fascinating and wondrous work. I now know how the ancient Egyptians pronounced the name of their country. For many years growing up, I had thought of studying archeology to become a worker in the ancient realms of Egypt. I even have a cartouche of Ramases the Third tattooed on my right shoulder. One of my regrets is that I have never had the funds to travel to Egypt. To be able to gaze at the pyramids at Giza is one of my bucket list items. I hope I can make it before that old bucket gets kicked! Again, thanks for this article.
As someone who speaks urdu and farsi, this entire article was so fascinating, and I was consistently pausing and looking up words and historical information on my own culture and language. So many of the ancient Egyptian words are similar to urdu, farsi, and arabic. I couldn’t help but smile at how conjoined everything is.
I am so very interested in Egyptology, I wanted to be an archaeologist, but my parents said that I would never make any money doing it. So I did what they thought I should and became a nurse. I really didn’t want to be one, not because I don’t like helping others or helping them heal but because it just took a toll on me and my empathy.
My husband is aver proud egyptian and I truly enjoy listening to him talk about it. I especially love perusal him talk about it. Egypt is one of the oldest countries in the whole world. Though they don’t teach hieroglyphs any more He ca’t believe that I know so much about a country I have never visited. I have always found ancient egypt very fascinating. I want to learn Egyptian Arabic but it is such a difficult language to learn.
my gosh, I was perusal this during dinner and completely forgot about my food, it was sooo interesting! I had a (long) phase during my childhood through young adulthood where I would read and watch everything about Ancient Egypt that i could get my hands on, and one thing I was always puzzled by was/is exactly this, how do we know what Ancient Egyptian actually sounded like. Thank you so much for this, it answered my question as well as it probably could, my inner child me is rejoicing ^^ Edit: I immediately watched the article again because this is just so cool to me still. Also, now I really could appreciate the writing of the article, truly well done!!
There was an English woman that lived in Egypt who could speak ancient Egyptian perfectly (as much as we know). Her name was Om SETI but her English name was Dorothy Edie. She believed she was the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian. It’s a fascinating story, several books have been written about her. Just look up Om SETI. 😃👍
Hey there Nativ, greetings from Germany! I don´t even know, if you will ever read this, but i wanna tell you a story: Back, when I was a student, really young, like 11 years old, the Lord of the rings films came into cinemas, and I got addicted! A few years later i choose latin as my second language to learn. And I got also addicted! I loved it! I soaked up every bit of lore we translated! Things got even greater, when I found more LotR people around school. We founded an elvish learning group for ourselves. And this was the first time, i really got into history of langauges and pronounciation! When my school ended, it all drifted apart… But then, YEARS later youtube points me right towards your youtube website, making me feel like I have come home! Thank you very much!
Where I live we speak a language that has many different dialects. Just travel 10 miles in either direction and you may hear the same words spoken with totally different sounds. It must be a hell of a job trying to find the origins and the differences of a language that has been spoken for thousands of years over such vaste area.
I’m a bit late ;), but this is a really great material. I have friends who study old Slavic languages, mainly Polish and Czech, how these languages sounded in the Middle Ages and later until the creation of these two modern languages. They both work at the University of Warsaw. It’s an exciting job. The Middle Ages is my hobby, so I’m interested in how the English language changed after the conquest of William the Conqueror, or how the German language developed since Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and later since Charlemagne… in its eastern lands. Once again, thank you very much for this very interesting popular science material. Best Wishes from Poland. 🙂 Kind regards – Stanley
I majored in Linguistics, so naturally, this is extremely fascinating to me. The formula for deciphering how an ancient language sounds is pretty straightforward, so long as you know the history of all the various cultures that interacted with the target group, over a long enough period of time. It takes quite a long time to draw these connections, but I think it’s so worth it. We too often believe that cultural memes, languages, and traditions belong only to us, but this just isn’t true. Human beings have always borrowed from one another, and at some point, these elements become just as much a part of our culture as any. This is why the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ as something belonging to one group only, then stolen, is a fallacy. We are products of our environment, which is constantly changing; so much so that even the language we speak is derived from countless relationships, over generations. It’s a beautiful reminder of our shared humanity, and our nature as highly social beings.
Fun fact about Rosetta’s stone: as y’all can see, the greek script is all attached, that’s because ancient greek people, from the invention of their alphabet, to the death of Alexander the great, wrote with only capital letters, without writing accents nor spirits and without spaces between words; that script was just a bunch of all attached letters.
Something I’ve noticed about evolving languages and learning their beginnings; is how lifestyle really plays a big role on how they decided to pronounce or not pronounce something. The Egyptian language for example, you can tell how hot it was based on how the language sounded, the amount of breath placed on the inclination(s). Furthermore you can see how something simple such as heat could shape an early dialect and tongue. Hmm has anyone else found this?
This reminds me of Stargate, when Daniel Jackson realizes that the natives of the planet they’ve gone to are speaking something very akin to ancient Egyptian. Even though he’s well-learned in the language, it takes him seeing it written in hieroglyphs to recognize it, because, whether it was due to the alien culture sustaining linguistic drift during its millennia of separation from Earth or whether it was due to incorrect or incomplete knowledge of what ancient Egyptian sounded among Earth’s linguistic scholars… or both… Jackson’s expectations of the language’s vowel sounds were very different from the ones he was hearing. Once he was able to mentally adjust to the new vowel sounds, he was able to understand and communicate with the alien culture almost fluently. I didn’t realize how firmly based in the reality of Egyptological conundrums that was until perusal this article. I know… dorky connection to make here, but Stargate will always have a soft spot in my heart. Seeing and loving it as a kid is a big part of why I became interested in linguistics in the first place.
The same problem presents itself in ancient Hebrew when pronouncing the name for God. The word written down is YHVH which, when the letters are sounded out, is Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. The lack of vowels has people completely stumped. Many people of course try to insert vowels but the truth is that we just don’t know. It’s all very fascinating stuff. Ancient languages and what not.
This interests me. Because in the same way, I’m actively trying to find back the language of my grandparents / ancestors in Taiwanese, a language that maybe known as Hokkien to the rest of Southeast Asia. It is getting rarer to hear in Taiwan or the rest of Asia nowadays due to unspeakable suppression. It has a very interesting and cryptic connection to the ancient Central Plain Han Chinese. Amazing amount of it is preserved in literary Hokkien, along with other Southern Sinitic languages. People are often shocked when they learn that Mandarin is the “barbarian’s language” and the ancient Song Dynasty poems when read in Taiwanese, they actually rhyme. To clarify, I am not saying Taiwanese Hokkien is the language of the ancient kingdom, I am merely stating that you can peer into the ancient language by broadening your understanding of the Southern Sinitic languages. Everything is so politicalized these days, people are so brainwashed, easily butt-hurt, and can’t just focus on the linguistics.
Your blocking of the words for Ramses’ title is a bit off around 6:19. It’s actually 3 words. “nswt” is the first and translates just as “king.” The second part “biti” translates literally as “those of the sedge and the bee,” sedge being a representative plant of Upper Egypt and the bee being representative of the marshes in Lower Egypt. The symbols themselves are literally a logogram on top of a kind of…personification particle (the t/half circle). Your full translation is 100% correct, it’s just that Egyptian can be…screwey compared to English, which I’m sure you’re very aware of. Still a fun article! I’m just being pedantic.
9:51 Ls and Rs are frequently interchanged with one another in the written forms of some ancient languages, and presumably in the pronunciation of these letters as well. In phonetics, L and R are liquids. I consider consonants solids, and vowels gases to fill out the metaphor. I’m thinking of how liquid water exists as a middling state, bordered on both ends of the temperature spectrum relative to it, with frozen solid water on the cold end, and evaporated water vapor on the hot end.
Hello, first of all, thank you for makimg this article, and second of all, I’m Egyptian and I can assure you that the ancient Egyptian is still partially spoken around Egypt not just Coptic. If you want to know how ancient Egyptian sounded like throughout its existence, just look for Egyptian villages, towns & cities in Egypt today. Large portion of them do exist since the ancient times, but you’d need to write their names in google translate since there are some letters that doesn’t exist in English. If you’re reading this comment rn so here’s a good list of these cities to search: 1. Damanhur (City of Horus), Damietta (Demyat), Rosetta (Rashit), HiW (a village meaning the “empty”), Esna, Aswan (Syene), Asyut (Syout), Minya (Men’at Khufu literally “Khufu’s hospital”), and finally Napoleon’s famous battle Shubrakhit is the modern edition of the ancient village of Shopro Akhet meaning “Field of Horizon”.
I was lucky enough that the professor for the first class I took in Egyptian history explained how Champolion studied Coptic in preparation for deciphering Egyptian. So from the very beginning of my academic study of Egyptian history I knew that Coptic had been the key. That was over 40 years ago. (I use an old picture of me on Youtube).
I believe it should have a lot of vowel sounds, as it is a hot region. This is based on what we see in the languages of the world, where it is colder it seems that people speak with their mouth more closed or trembling, and in warmer regions, in a more open way, “panting”. Take the sound of Portuguese from Portugal and Brazil, the difference in accents is quite impressive.
Going off the subject of language, I see two red-breasted geese in one Egyptian image. They are found today only in Siberia in small numbers and a few more southerly wintering areas. Is it possible that in ancient times, they were much more numerous and ranged down into Egypt? It shows that the exploration of a culture and its language will often reveal things of interest for much scholarly research of diverse subjects.
My daughter had an Egyptian very close friend y she is big and a water polo player athlete, attended UC Berkeley btw her voice is sweet y a very beautiful woman btw her dad is a professor at UC Irvine 🎉add knows Spanish y Arabic language btw my daughter knows Mandarin y writes Chinese scripts y programming languages; They both sound good to me 🎉😂❤
This is awesome! I keep hearing that scientist think that most of the Amazon plants and foliage weren’t always there that it has in fact been overgrown and there was a civilization there at one point of great riches and gold on everything. Some explorer went there and was telling his people all about it so I guess like 30 years later someone else went back and tried to find it, everyone was gone they think Europeans brought diseases into the town and they all died off hence all the overgrowth of plants and things
What worries me is the assumption that there was one agreed pronunciation. In East Kent in the UK there are 3 towns within 5 miles of each other, Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs. Years ago older people there told me that in the early part of the 20th century, before national radio broadcasting had evened out local accents and an agreed “Received Pronunciation” of standard English was gaining ground, they could tell by their accent which of the 3 towns someone came from. British people can usually identify a large number of regional accents in England as well as accents of English as spoken in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the US, Canada, and Australia. In fact some accents in the north of England can be impenetrable to southerners even without the use of regional vocabulary. Our current Queen’s accent has changed over the course of her reign, and even the speech of younger members of the royal family shows the growing influence of Thames “estuary” English, a slightly downmarket version of RP. In the UK the “glottal stop” where the letter “t” disappears in some speech is widespread nowadays (water becomes wa’er) and “elision” where a sound is dropped (camera become cam’ra, and fish and chips becomes fish’n’chips) is common. So, interesting as this contribution and its analysis may be, ultimately it is just a best guess and a very approximate one at that, isn’t it?
Brilliant, mate! Funny thing happens when you start going backward in time within a linguistic tradition: it all starts to make sense. 40 years ago I had this experience, very much accidentally. I was fairly fluent in German, and in the course of my Comp Lit degree, I went from 19th century German and English authors (the only ones I could read in the original), back through the 18th and 17th centuries, until I arrived at texts in Elizabethan English and its German equivalent, both of which seemed, I dunno–kind of obvious (?) Then, when I pushed even further back, into Chaucerian Middle English and its German cousin, I began to sort of “intuit” both meaning and pronunciation. Now, I had help in all this–Lit professors who were also gifted linguists, etc–but then, when I pushed even further back, into Bede, Beowulf and the surviving texts in Old High German on my own, just for fun, that same “intuitive” process just kept happening. Many years later, when I had a chance to listen to Seamus Heaney reading Beowulf, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I had more or less guessed correctly in my amateurish attempts at translation and pronunciation. I can’t really put my finger on what exactly this phenomenon might be, but it seems to me that a modern linguist who is a native speaker of Coptic, for example, might very well be able to do the same thing–letting the older forms of the language sort of “guide” you, based on your familiarity with its modern descendants…
Excuse me. I am a layman. I am not certain if the word “nofret” or “nafret” is written with hieroglyphs correctly. The first hieroglyph (with a cross) is nfr, the second (horned viper) is f, the third ( mouth) is r, and the last one (loaf) is t. So we have 6 consonants insted of supposed 4. My another question is: What did “nofret” mean?
You are an educational powerhouse. In college a few years ago, my good friend was majoring in English, and had to take two Linguistics courses. She said it was the hardest part of her degree path, and I watched her work through the coursework and study it, it blew my mind. It was far more intricate and fascinating than I had previously assumed. It was an emphasis on French and Cajun French linguistics (we are Cajun descendants in Louisiana), but it ended up leading me to your website and I have always enjoyed your articles over the years. Mind-blowingly interesting and educational.
Ancient Egyptian sounds so much like Urdu to me, a language which is a mixture of Persian and Arabic. In Urdu, قومیت pronounced Qomiyat means Nationhood and the word for Egypt Qoomat sounds so similar to it..Nafret pronounced the same in Urdu means hatred. Peromet meaning person sounds a lot like “Piyambar” in Urdu which means a messenger. Ramat in Ancient Egyptian sound like Rahmat in Urdu which means a blessing or a person who is a blessing. The Egyptian name Yatin sounds a lot like Yasin. Fascinating really. Simply fascinating.
It blows my mind that a civilization and a language as powerful and enduring as Ancient Egypt’s could so totally die off. Even their great nemesis the Hittite Empire vanished from history until recently (other than the Biblical references). I could understand it happening in a cataclysm such as the Great Flood or total annihilation by an enemy power, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s more like they were absorbed and digested by other cultures. I would think something more would be left behind.
Very interesting article! 🙂 And a topic that I have never seen anyone else do. I’d love a part 2! ❤How to read hieroglyphs? Or is there letters/words that have past on to our language? Oh that would be cool to know how the letters we use have evolved. I know many of them are ancient! Just a little different nowadays.
Very interesting, but ‘oldest written language’? Not so sure about that. A quick google returned – “Sumerian language, language isolate and the oldest written language in existence. First attested about 3100 bce in southern Mesopotamia, it flourished during the 3rd millennium bce” I was pretty sure that Ur / Sumer has the oldest writings.
Mostly over my head (aspirated “t”?) but I am fascinated with linguistics. I do study ancient music. Specifically percussion and the transcription of African and Asiatic rhythms from the distant past and how it relates to music today. In parts of the sub-Sahara, natural rhythm was a talent thought to have been bestowed by the Gods. If you didn’t have a knack for your tribe’s specific rhythmic syncopations, you were thought to be lesser than and were looked down upon. Many of these early rhythms are still played on various percussion instruments, handed down from generation to generation. The Chimurenga 12/8 rhythm from Zimbabwe is 3,000 years old because there are references to it in oral histories going back to that time. Mind blowing.
remember that question as a kid,,, if you could have any power.. what would it be? currently 33yo, answering that question again, I’d wish to be able to see “life” – info, & history . through it’s truest path. i don’t want to adjust anytying or take over history, i just wanna see how and why things became what they are.
In essence, all languages started from one time period and were taken to different parts of the world by those who spoke the language as a group . And that was the time mentioned in the Old Testament. The time when languages were confused at the Time of the Tower of Babel. Man was commanded to populate and inhabit the entire globe and not stay in one place…hence the confusion.
“….Additionally, do leaders and historians of Melanin background; includes African (Negro), Khoikhois, Dravidian, Sinhalese, Mongoloid, Melanesian, Philippines (Negrito), Micronesian, Australoid, New Zealanders, Polynesian, and American Natives; hold annual convention where amongst various lengths of discussion arises the all inclusive topics of — which group was responsible for building the Egyptian Pyramids, along, why Egypt and not somewhere less risk adverse to political tremors like Las Vegas, also, why did no one leave behind complimentary artifacts to suggest modern Egyptians are not educated enough about their Afroasiatic red prints ….”
Thanks for such an informative and in depth article on Egyptian language. I’m from Southwest Louisiana and mini families. Spoke French originally and had to learn English to go to school. Often they didn’t annunciate either language very well, and it was difficult to understand them speaking English, because they didn’t annunciate well and their grammar was off. Having the advantage of going to 12 years of private Catholic school for overprivileged children and 23 semesters of college along with Jesuit priest as tutors (Jesuits are the most extensively educated of all priesthoods) I know how to speak and write grammatically correct English. It is irritating to hear it spoken incorrectly and in my head I mentally correct the person speaking so often I loose the information being presented. Kudos to you for such a great presentation my friend! 😎
Egyptian: 2690 BC – Present (circa. 4700 years old) Greek: 1450 BC – Present (circa. 3500 years old) Chinese: 1250 BC – Present (circa. 3300 years old) Aramaic: 1100 BC – Present (circa. 3100 years old) Hebrew: 1000 BC–200 CE, 1800 – Present (circa. 3000 years old) Farsi: 522 BC – Present (circa. 2500 years old) Tamil: 300 BC – Present (circa. 2300 years old) Korean: no later than 57 BC – Present (circa. 2100 years old) Italian: as a descendent of Latin, 100 BC – Present (circa. 2100 years old) Bonus: Arabic: roughly 100 CE – Present (circa. 1900 years old)
We do still have most of our words from the ancient times. However it’s much lighter than how it’s pronounced in this article. We’ve mixed arabic with our native language that resulted in the unique Egyptian Arabic nowadays. The accent and the order of words in a sentence is very different than proper arabic. 🇪🇬
From perusal your article I would say that linguists can take a good “educated guess” as to what ancient Egyptian sounded like. I wouldn’t firmly say that this is what ancient Egyptian sounded like. A good example is comparing the various accents found in English throughout the world. There are some accents in English that are so radically different that it literally can be difficult for native English speakers from what part of the United States to understand English speakers from another part of the United States.
It’s fascinating to look into civilizations that existing an extraordinary amount of time, and yet still is shrouded in mystery; they have more lost history than we our cultures have existed, and yet they seem so primitive despite living for such a long time; this begs the question of why was there no perceivable historical scientific progress during their existence? was there nothing to record it, or were they too focused on other aspects of life than progression, and what changed for our societies from the past 1000 or so years that extremely sped up technology, especially in the past 200 years?