Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Late Egyptian, the language of ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, is attested in written form in a large array of literary and non-literary genres, mainly in the hieratic script on papyri and ostraca, but also in hieroglyphic monumental epigraphy. Late Egyptian is the first stage of the second major phase of Egyptian, according to the widely accepted division of the history of the language into Earlier and Later Egyptian. Typologically, Late Egyptian reflects major differences with respect to earlier stages of the language. Being more analytical in character, Late Egyptian thus displays a marked tendency to separate morphological from lexical information. It also tends to be more explicit in the articulation of sentences at the macro-syntactic level (Conjunctive and Sequential) and more time-oriented in its system of grammatical tenses than the aspect-oriented system of Classical Egyptian.