http://www.fnspo.cz/mmm/egypt/hiero/1.htm
Lesson 1 The Egyptian Language and its Script
The Ancient Egyptian Language
Ancient Egyptian belongs to a family of languages in Africa and the Near East that have enough similarities in both grammar and vocabulary to make a common ancestor highly probable. Scientists speak of the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic language group. This group consisted of six branches, one of them being the Ancient-Egyptian language. Other branches were Semitic, Berber, Tsjadic, Koesjitic and Omotic. Only the Egyptian and Semitic languages have an extensive written tradition.
In its time Egyptian was of course a living language, which continuously evolved throughout the centuries. According to current resarch, it is possible to distinguish five different phases in the language:
Old Egyptian This is the language we know through inscriptions dating from the Old Kingdom. This is the period from which the first fully developed texts came forward (ca 2700-2200 BC).
Middle Egytian This form of the language was used in the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom (ca 2200-1800 BC). Middle Egyptian is regarded as the classical phase of the language, and remained in use in literary, religiuous and monumental inscriptions until late in the Graeco-Roman period. It is this phase of the language that is handled in this on-line course.
New Egyptian During the New Kingdom the spoken language continued to evolve, while the Middle Egyptian form remained in use as a written language. During the Amarna period (with Echnaton) this tradition was broken, and literary texts were written in New Egyptian (ca 1580-700 BC). An exception to this were the religous texts, were Middle Egyptian remained the written language.
Demotic This is a continuation of New Egyptian, which remained in use well into the Roman period (ca 700 BC - 600 AD). This version of the language already had a tendency to write words alphabetically, by making use of signs having the value of 1 consonant.
Coptic This is the final phase of the Egyptian language, which came in use in the 3rd century AD. The Coptic script consists of the 24 letters from the Greek alphabet, completed with 6 signs from Demotic to indicate Egyptian sounds that had no correspondence in Greek. The Demotic language is of interest to researchers, because it also used letters for vocals. Older versions of the language only notated a consonantal skeleton (analogous to Arabic languages). In the 10th century AD the Coptic language was replaced by the Arabic.
The Hieroglyphic Script
The hieroglyphic script is of a pictorial nature and the oldest written form of the Ancient Egyptian language. It is this script with which the Egyptian culture is identified. Despite its pictorial nature, the hieroglyphs are not a primitive script. No, they form a completely developed writing system, with which complex semantic information could be communicated. As such, the script is no less developed than our own alphabet.
The earliest documented occurrence of hieroglyphic inscriptions dates back to the pre-dynastic period, mostly in the form of short documentary descriptions on stone objects and pottery. The latest know occurrence of the script is found in the temple of Philae, and dates from 394 AD.
The script itself evolved over time. As history took its course, new hieroglyphic signs were added to the language. As such, the number of hieroglyphs evolved from about 700 in the Old Kingdom to over 6000 in the Ptolemaic period.