N.B.: The terms "semitic" and "hamitic" are actually linguistic terms, not ethnic designations. They do not refer to racial or ethnic groups, but rather to language groups. A semite is one who speaks a semitic language. A hamite is one who speaks a hamitic language. This has always been true, despite popular misuse of the terms.
The language of ancient Egypt stood geographically between the semitic languages of the Middle East and the hamitic languages of northern and eastern Africa. Traditionally, Egyptian has been termed a "Hamito-semitic language," since it contained significant characteristics of semitic languages, as well elements of Berber and Chad, which are hamitic. The relationship of all these elements in Egyptian was, until recently, open to question. It was once advocated that this mixture of hamitic and semitic was the result of a prehistoric migration of semites from the east into the Nile Valley which was already populated by hamitic-speaking natives, causing the two groups to blend together linguistically and culturally. Proponents of this theory cited as proof the anthropometric evidence from corpses of the Predynastic Period which seemed to suggest that the Nile Valley was infiltrated by Indo-aryan people who established themselves as rulers over the indigenous population. These outsiders were termed the "dynastic race."
However, there are serious linguistic and anthropological flaws in this model. Most importantly, modern anthropological interpretation of the skeletal material indicates that there was no dynastic race. There is no biological evidence to support the notion that the Nile River Valley was invaded by easterners in prehistorical times. Indeed, it was the native inhabitants of the Nile Valley, who were indigenous there since at least the Epipaleolithic Age, who went on to found Egyptian civilization.
Given that there was no retroactive blending of semitic and hamitic languages in Egyptian, another reason had to account for the combination of those elements. Initially, some Egyptololgists suggested that the Egyptian language represented a stage of linguistic development which predated the division of the languages of the Near East and Africa into semitic and hamitic branches. In this way, Egyptian was some great parent language of these two great language groups, i.e., a "mother tongue," from which they all descended. This theory had several difficulties, including how to account for the fact that it would then be contemporary with its so-called daughter-languages, and at the same time contained grammatical formations at variance with those of its "daughter-languages."
This theory was quickly rejected in favor of a comprehensive reassessment of all the languages of western Asia and Africa which showed similiarity. Linguists now agree in the identification of a "super family" in the tree of human languages, called the AFRO-ASIATIC FAMILY, or the HAMITO-SEMITIC FAMILY of languages. It encompasses nearly all the languages of the Near East and northern Africa. The Afro-asiatic family consists of six coordinate branches, each branch with its own set languages.
Egyptian (ancient Egypt): Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Demotic, Coptic
Cushitic (East Africa south of the Sahara): Galla, Somali, Oromo, Bedawiye, Hadya
Semitic (western Asia): Akkadian, Aramaic, South Arabic, Arabic, Hebrew, Eblaite, Amorite, Maltese, Ugaritic, Amharic, Canaanite, Phoenician
Chadic (West Africa south of the Sahara): Hausa, etc.
Berber (North Africa west of Egypt): Numidian, Tuareg, Riff
Omotic (southern Ethiopia): Omotic
Because Egyptian was only one branch in this family, it shared many features in common with the other branches, and yet also displayed significant and unique differences from them.
I. M. Diakonoff theorized that the Afro-asiatic Family developed out of a common parent language that was spoken ca. 8,000 - 6,000 B.C. in the area that is now the Sahara Desert (which at the time was more of a savannah than a desert). From that location it spread southward and eastward. Called the AFRO-ASIATIC PROTO-LANGUAGE, some linguists have even attempted to reformulate its basic elements by studying those characteristics common to all the languages of the super family. However, other linguists and philologists argue that based upon the degree of separation between Egyptian and Akkadian (which is the earliest fully recorded semitic language), the Afro-asiatic languages actually separated earlier by 12,000 B.C. Furthermore, other scholars theorize that the proto-language was centered, not in the Sahara, but in the upper reaches of the Nile Valley, in the southern Sudan and Ethiopia, and from there it spread north, east, and westward.
In addition to a common source for their most ancient vocabulary, as well as other syntactic similarities, what binds the branches of the Afro-asiatic family together is their consonantal root system. In this system most words consist of three consonants, while a lesser number have two or (to an even lesser extent) four consonants. In any one word, these consonants are called the "root," and the root relates to the general concept behind the meaning of the word. Usually, the root is unalterable, although it can be inflected by the use of infixes (elements which are inserted within the root) and by prefixes and suffixes, all of which denote grammatical changes and which form new words with related meanings.
Most significantly, the vowels of the root--and hence its vocalization--change depending upon how the root is used in any given part of speech, e.g., as a noun, a verb, or in a certain mood, case or verb tense, etc. The pattern of vowel usage and change is called the "scheme." Thus, root and scheme are the two major elements which constitute the word in the Afro-asiatic languages. For example, in Arabic the root pertaining to the concept of teaching and learning is d-r-s. While the consonants drs will always remain the same, the scheme and vocalization will change depending upon usage, e.g.:
darasa, "to study, learn"
darrasa, "to teach"
dars, "lesson, class"
durus, "lessons"
mudaaris, "teacher (male)"/mudaarisa, "teacher (female)"
madrasa, "school"
The same system was true in ancient Egyptian. The consonats would remain the same, while the vowels and vocalization changed according to use. The vocalization generally followed a precise and unchanging pattern of speech. Because the speech patterns were already known and generally understood by the native speakers--at least in early times--they did not sense the need to record the vocalizations in their writing. For that reason, the ancients invented and wrote only the consonants of words and not the vowels. With a few exceptions, they probably did not even recognize the existence of vowels at that time.
Without the vowels, any tri-consonantal root generally looks the same when written, no matter how it is being used in a text. While this system plays havoc with modern philologists, the ancients had no apparent difficulty with it, given their fundamental notions about reading. In general, the Egyptians read their written texts aloud, and even when they did read silently, they still moved their lips. So in Papyrus Lansing the teacher instructs his pupil to "write with your hand, read with your mouth" (notice--not with "your eyes"). Similarly, Egyptians learned to read by chanting aloud (q.v., Instructions to Merikare, 51). Clearly then, because the process of reading was always a direct extension of speech; the ancients could recognize the vocalic patterns of their written texts.
Today we do not recognize those patterns, nor can we restore the unwritten vowels with any measure of certainty. We are ignorant of the vocalic patterns which were uttered 5,000 years ago. However, to make the roots of ancient Egyptian words pronounceable today--and strictly as a matter of convenience--Egyptologists usually insert a short "e" between each consonant (e.g., nfr = "nefer"). This pattern is not an attempt to reconstruct the original ancient speech patterns.
It was not until ca. A.D. 470, and then only under the influence of foreign contacts, that the Egyptians regularly introduced vowels into their writing--with the development of Coptic, the ultimate form of the native Egyptian language, and which was written with Greek characters.
Over the course of its 4,000 year history, the written language of ancient Egypt went through five successive stages. In the texts, each stage or phase is identified by peculiarities of grammar, vocabulary and spelling, and in later times by the script. At different periods of Egyptian history, different phases of the language were employed in the inscriptions. These phases are:
Old Egyptian (ca. 2686 - 2160 B.C.). Scripts were hieroglyphic and hieratic.
Middle Egyptian (ca. 2060 - 1293 B.C). Scripts were hieroglyphic and hieratic.
Late Egyptian (ca. 1293 - 715 B.C.). Scripts were hieroglyphic and hieratic.
Demotic (ca. 715 B.C. - A. D. 470). This written language was used from Dynasty 25 through the Roman Period. The script was demotic.
Coptic (ca. A.D. 470 - 640). This was the last phase of the native Egyptian language. It was used from the late Roman Period through the Arab conquest, after which Arabic was imposed upon the country. Coptic is still used today as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Scripts were Coptic and demotic (rare).
The essential feature of the ancient Egyptian language is that in any given era, the written language learned in school and used by the literate elite was not the same language that was actually spoken by the general population in that era. As a rule, the written language in Egypt did not conform to the spoken language. Each phase of Egyptian represented a standardized idiom that was artificially imposed, frozen in time, and maintained by the literate population as a lingua franca for the entire nation. However, because these phases essentially appeared in sequence, Egyptologists previously thought that they represented evolutionary changes over time. Abrupt changeovers from one phase to the next were explained as conscious and periodic attempts to realign the written idiom with the ever-evolving vernacular.
On the other hand, Egyptologists now believe that most phases of Egyptian language actually represent dialectical differences based on region in addition to evolutionary changes over time. The dialectical nature of Coptic indicates that different dialects did exist in earlier times and were spoken in the various parts of Egypt, despite that they were not reflected in the standardized written language. That the phases were based upon near contemporary dialects would explain why there are significant elements of Late Egyptian in certain texts of the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period that are entirely non-existent in proper Old and Middle Egyptian.
At various periods, different regional dialects were adopted as the official written language for the entire country. This single written language, as a tool for effective governance, was standardized throughout the nation by the royal government and its representatives, which employed it for all official communications, including: royal decrees, laws, religious texts, contracts, deeds, etc. Through royal patronage, the standard written language was also fostered in literature and further legitimized.
When a pupil went to school, he did not learn to write his dialect, but rather, he learned to read and write the official standard language. The written language would have lasted hundreds of years--petrified in time--until circumstances, usually political in nature (e.g., wars, revolutions, dynastic changes, etc.) dictated a transition to another dialect or to revert to an earlier phase of the language (as occurred at the beginning of Dynasty 18). Of course, during the long use of any one written language, changes in the vernacular would be ongoing, putting a strain on the written language to conform to those changes.
Old Egyptian was the language of the inscriptions and documents of Dynasties 4 - 6 during the Old Kingdom. It was a northern (Lower Egyptian) dialect centering around Memphis. The ultimate dividing line between Old and Middle Egyptian was Dynasty 9. Interestingly, the language of much of the Pyramid Texts, found in pyramids at Saqqara, seems to be based upon a southern (Upper Egyptian) dialect, since it displays many features in common with Late Egyptian.
Middle Egyptian did not differ much from Old Egyptian. It also was a Lower Egyptian Memphite dialect. By Dynasty 12, there is clear written evidence that standard Middle Egyptian was separating from the vernacular due to changes in the latter. The ancient Egyptians, even at the height of the New Kingdom, believed that the earlier Middle Kingdom (i.e., Dynasties 12 - 13) was the high point of their culture and civilization. Thus, they considered Middle Egyptian to be the classical form of their language and readily readopted it as the official language of Dynasty 18 (in much the same way that modern Israel has readopted Hebrew language). A thousand years after it was no longer spoken, Egyptian scribes were still attempting to write Middle Egyptian in order to show a cultural identification with their past. Remnants and aberrations of Middle Egyptian were still used in monumental inscriptions up to ca. 500 B.C.
Late Egyptian, an Upper Egyptian dialect, was essentially the language of non-literary texts of Dynasties 19 - 25 (i.e.: letters, reports, accounts, memos, graffiti, etc.), although literary texts, religious, and monumental inscriptions of the same period were still heavily influenced by Middle Egyptian. It first appeared regularly in late Dynasty 18 during the Amarna Period. King Akhenaten's devotion to the Aten sun disk and his emphasis on "living in truth" probably spurred the adoption of the vernacular as the written idiom. On the other hand, traces of Late Egyptian did occasionally appear in inscriptions prior to its formal adoption. Sometimes, it adulterated the texts of the Second Intermediate Period (Dynasties 14 - 17) during the political chaos of the Hyksos domination, and it was sometimes mixed into Middle Egyptian texts of Dynasty 18, suggesting that by that time, the scribes were not always aware of all the distinctions between the two idioms.
Because the official written language was generally tied to the royal administration, we might formulate the following rule. In Egypt, the standardized written language was easily maintained across the land during periods of strong royal authority. However, during periods of political breakdown and weakness of the central royal government, the written standard could not be maintained as easily throughout the entire country. These are the periods when we see expect to see an increase in the influence of local dialects or the vernacular in the inscriptions (accounting for Late Egyptian influence in texts of the First and Second Intermediate Periods).