埃及语(Egyptian language)

尼罗河谷已亡佚的亚非诸语言（Afroasiatic language）。其历史悠久，划分为五个时期︰上古埃及语（Old Egyptian，西元前3000～西元前2000年），主要为金字塔铭文（Pyramid Texts）和古代传记文献；中古埃及语（Middle Egyptian，西元前2000～西元前1300年），为古典文学语言；近古埃及语（Late Egyptian，西元前1300～西元前700年），主要是些手稿；通俗埃及语（Demotic，西元前700～西元500年），使用於波斯、希腊和罗马统治的各个时期，其与近古埃及语的区别主要在语法系统；科普特语（Coptic，约300～1500），主要用於书写宗教（基督教）文献，9世纪被阿拉伯语取代後逐渐形成方言，但一直存在於科普特正教会（Coptic Orthodox Church）的祈祷书中。埃及语原来用象形文字（hieroglyph），手写体象形文字发展成僧侣体和通俗体两种字体，通俗体文字用於通俗埃及语时期，僧侣体文字主要用於抄写纸莎草纸的宗教文献及其他传统文献。科普特语采用希腊字母，并增加七个借自埃及通俗文字的字母。

English version：

Egyptian language

Extinct Afroasiatic language of the Nile valley. Its very long history comprises five periods: Old Egyptian (3000-2000 BC), best exemplified by a corpus of religious inscriptions known as the Pyramid Texts and a group of autobiographical tomb inscriptions; Middle Egyptian (2000-1300 BC), the classical literary language; Late Egyptian (1300-700 BC), known mainly from manuscripts; Demotic (700 BC-AD 500), used in the periods of Persian, Greek, and Roman dominance, and differing from Late Egyptian chiefly in its graphic system; and Coptic (AD 300-1500), the language of Christian Egypt, gradually supplanted as a vernacular by Arabic from the 9th century on but still preserved to some degree in the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Egyptian was originally written in hieroglyphs, out of which evolved hieratic, a cursive rendering of hieroglyphs, and demotic, a kind of shorthand reduction of hieratic. Coptic was written in a modified form of the Greek alphabet, with seven signs added from the Demotic script for sounds that did not occur in Greek.