Egyptian is the indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century CE in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern-day Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic as the language of daily life in the centuries after the...
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Egyptian is the indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century CE in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern-day Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic as the language of daily life in the centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Coptic is still used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church. It reportedly has a handful of native speakers today.
Scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions:
Egyptian writing in the form of label and signs has been dated to 3200 BCE. These early texts are generally lumped together under the term "Archaic Egyptian."
In 1999, Archaeology Magazine reported that the earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to 3400 BC which "...challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs,...
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