Re: Ancient Egyptian writng

The main sources for Egyptian vowels are Coptic, Greek and
Cuneiform spellings of Egyptian names.  It seems a comparison
of theese suggests that vowels changed quite a bit through the
ages. See

Author 	 Loprieno, Antonio
Title 	Ancient egyptian : a linguistic introduction / Antonio Loprieno
Publication 	Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995
Material Information 	xv, 322 s. : tab.
ISBN 	0521443849 (inb.)
ISBN 	0521448492 (hft.)

R A Brown skrev:
> Michael Adams wrote:
>
>> Heiroglyphs? Herotic, Demotic or Coptic?
>
>
> I said _ancient_ Egyptian - so clearly *not* Coptic, which is written in
> the Coptic _alphabet_ (mainly, tho not entirely, of Greek origin) and
> certainly shows vowels as well as consonants. Indeed, it is by
> comparison with Coptic, among other things, that one can attempt to
> suggest what the vocalism of the ancient language might have been.
>
> as for hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic - I understood that the three
> were essentially isomorphic.
>
>>
>> Well, from what I know they often used whole words or whole syllybles? Or
>> groupings, much like you see in Chinese..
>
>
> Not the hieroglyphics I've learnt!
>
>> Apis the bull, which thru many changes, became Alpha, or Aleph, or Alif,
>> namely our letter A and related sounds to it.. To include the Hebrew and
>> Arabic letters.
>
>
> My understanding is that the notion that the early Semitic abjad was
> derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics is very uncertain.
>
> [snip]
>
>>> It must be recent - I thought my info was reasonably up-to-date. Could
>>> you point me to the 'right circles' which controvert the accepted wisdom
>>> that the phonetic symbols in ancient Egyptian writing represent one, two
>>> or three consonants?
>
>
> I would still like the pointers I requested.
>

--

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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