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125-565: Nubians ( / ˈ n uː b i ən z , ˈ n j uː -/ ) ( Nobiin : Nobī, Arabic : النوبيون ) are a Nilo-Saharan speaking ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt . They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization . In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians , although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs . They speak Nubian languages as

250-773: A literary language , and was also the language of the New Kingdom administration. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt and later. Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature , comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun , the love poems of the Chester–Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Any . Instructions became

375-576: A synthetic language , Egyptian by the Late Egyptian phase had become an analytic language . The relationship between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian has been described as being similar to that between Latin and Italian. The Late Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 8th century BC, giving rise to Demotic. Demotic is a later development of the Egyptian language written in the Demotic script , following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic ,

500-559: A "red" population and a "black" population. Although Egypt and Nubia have a shared pre-dynastic and pharaonic history, the two histories diverge with the fall of Ancient Egypt and the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. At this point, the area of land between the 1st and the 6th cataract of the Nile became known as Nubia. Egypt was conquered first by the Persians and named

625-418: A change in their west Eurasian ancestry from that found in the ancient samples. Nobiin language At least 2500 years ago, the first Nubian speakers migrated into the Nile valley from the southwest. Old Nubian is thought to be ancestral to Nobiin. Nobiin is a tonal language with contrastive vowel and consonant length. The basic word order is subject–object–verb . Nobiin is currently spoken along

750-798: A common identity, which has been celebrated in poetry, novels, music, and storytelling. Nubians in modern Sudan include the Danagla around Dongola Reach, the Mahas from the Third Cataract to Wadi Halfa, and the Sikurta around Aswan. These Nubians write using their own script. They also practice scarification : Mahas men and women have three scars on each cheek, while the Danaqla wear these scars on their temples. Younger generations appear to be abandoning this custom. Nubia's ancient cultural development

875-558: A few have survived that were written in hieratic and (later) demotic. There was also a form of cursive hieroglyphs , used for religious documents on papyrus, such as the Book of the Dead of the Twentieth Dynasty ; it was simpler to write than the hieroglyphs in stone inscriptions, but it was not as cursive as hieratic and lacked the wide use of ligatures . Additionally, there was a variety of stone-cut hieratic, known as "lapidary hieratic". In

1000-495: A few specialists in the language. For all other purposes, the Egyptological pronunciation is used, but it often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was pronounced. The following consonants are reconstructed for Archaic (before 2600 BC) and Old Egyptian (2686–2181 BC), with IPA equivalents in square brackets if they differ from the usual transcription scheme: / l / has no independent representation in

1125-620: A few villages in the northern Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan state. The main Nile Nubian groups from north to south are the Kenzi ( Kenzi/Mattokki-speaking ), Faddicca ( Nobiin-speaking ), Halfawi ( Nobiin-speaking ), Sukkot ( Nobiin-speaking ), Mahas ( Nobiin-speaking ), and Danagla ( Andaandi-speaking ). Throughout history various parts of Nubia were known by different names, including Ancient Egyptian : tꜣ stj "Land of

1250-514: A five- vowel system. The vowels / e / and / o / can be realized close-mid or more open-mid (as [ ɛ ] and [ ɔ ] , respectively). Vowels can be long or short, e.g., jáákí ' fear ' (long / aː / ), jàkkàr ' fish-hook ' (short / a / ). However, many nouns are unstable with regard to vowel length ; thus, bálé ~ báléé ' feast ' , ííg ~ íg ' fire ' , shártí ~ sháártí ' spear ' . Diphthongs are interpreted as sequences of vowels and

1375-513: A mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages , and Arabic as a second language. Neolithic settlements have been found in the central Nubian region dating back to 7000 BC, with Wadi Halfa believed to be the oldest settlement in the central Nile valley. Parts of Nubia, particularly Lower Nubia , were at times a part of ancient Pharaonic Egypt and at other times a rival state representing parts of Meroë or

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1500-462: A nominal feminine suffix * -at , a nominal prefix m- , an adjectival suffix -ī and characteristic personal verbal affixes. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, linguists have variously suggested that the Egyptian language shares its greatest affinities with Berber and Semitic languages, particularly Arabic (which is spoken in Egypt today) and Hebrew . However, other scholars have argued that

1625-442: A popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. Late Egyptian was also the language of New Kingdom administration. Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the difference between Middle and Old Egyptian. Originally

1750-426: A possible language shift to Arabic, Werner notes a very positive language attitude. Rouchdy (1992a) however notes that use of Nobiin is confined mainly to the domestic circle, as Arabic is the dominant language in trade, education, and public life. Sociolinguistically, the situation may be described as one of stable bilingualism : the dominant language (Arabic in this case), although used widely, does not easily replace

1875-621: A result of certain morphophonological processes. The voiced plosive / b / is mainly in contrast with / f / . Originally, [ z ] only occurred as an allophone of / s / before voiced consonants; however, through the influx of loanwords from Arabic it has acquired phonemic status: àzáábí ' pain ' . The glottal fricative [ h ] occurs as an allophone of /s, t, k, f, ɡ/ : síddó → híddó ' where? ' ; tánnátóón → tánnáhóón ' of him/her ' ; ày fàkàbìr → ày hàkàbìr ' I will eat ' ; dòllàkúkkàn → dòllàhúkkàn ' he has loved ' . This process

2000-444: A scribe jokes that his colleague's writing is incoherent like "the speech of a Delta man with a man of Elephantine ." Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian that, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from northern and southern dialects of Egyptian. Written Coptic has five major dialects, which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably

2125-683: A similar inventory to Kush, placing this firmly in an Eastern Sudanic zone. These Irem/Kush-lists are distinctive from the Wawat-, Medjay-, Punt-, and Wetenet-lists, which provide sounds typical to Afroasiatic languages." It is also uncertain to which language family the ancient Meroitic language is related. Kirsty Rowan suggests that Meroitic, like the Egyptian language , belongs to the Afroasiatic family. She bases this on its sound inventory and phonotactics , which, she argues, are similar to those of

2250-412: A small genetic distance. These findings in addition to multiple cross cemetery relatives that the analyses have revealed indicate that people of both the R and S cemeteries were part of the same population despite the archaeological and anthropological differences between the two burials showing social stratification. The study found some difference in Y haplogroups profiles between the two cemeteries with

2375-536: A split between Hill Nubian and the two Nile-Nubian languages occurred at least 2500 years ago. This is corroborated by the fact that the oral tradition of the Shaigiya tribe of the Jaali group of arabized Nile Nubians tells of coming from the southwest long ago. The speakers of Nobiin are thought to have come to the area before the speakers of the related Kenzi-Dongolawi languages (see classification below). Since

2500-503: A stressed vowel (⟨ bjn ⟩ = */ˈbaːjin/ 'bad') and as ⟨ jj ⟩ word-medially immediately before a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḫꜥjjk⟩ = */χaʕˈjak/ 'you will appear') and are unmarked word-finally (⟨ jt ⟩ = /ˈjaːtVj/ 'father'). In Middle Egyptian (2055–1650 BC), a number of consonantal shifts take place. By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom period, / z / and / s / had merged, and

2625-510: A stressed vowel in syllables that had been closed in earlier Egyptian (compare ⲛⲟⲩⲃ < */ˈnaːbaw/ 'gold' and ⲧⲁⲡ < * /dib/ 'horn'). The phonemes /d g z/ occur only in Greek loanwords, with rare exceptions triggered by a nearby /n/ : ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ/ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ < ꜥ.t n.t sbꜣ.w 'school'. Earlier *d ḏ g q are preserved as ejective t' c' k' k ' before vowels in Coptic. Although

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2750-553: A tone. Long consonants are only found in intervocalic position, whereas long vowels can occur in initial, medial and final position. Phonotactically , there might be a weak relationship between the occurrence of consonant and vowel length: forms like dàrrìl ' climb ' and dààrìl ' be present ' are found, but * dàrìl (short V + short C) and * dààrrìl (long V + long C) do not exist; similarly, féyyìr 'grow' and fééyìr 'lose (a battle)' occur, but not * féyìr and * fééyyìr . Nobiin has

2875-644: A transliteration of the corresponding Demotic "alphabetical" sign(s) in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . More changes occur in the 1st millennium BC and the first centuries AD, leading to Coptic (1st or 3rd – c. 19th centuries AD). In Sahidic ẖ ḫ ḥ had merged into ϣ š (most often from ḫ ) and ϩ / h / (most often ẖ ḥ ). Bohairic and Akhmimic are more conservative and have a velar fricative / x / ( ϧ in Bohairic, ⳉ in Akhmimic). Pharyngeal *ꜥ had merged into glottal / ʔ / after it had affected

3000-465: A uniliteral hieroglyph. Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar noted that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African", reflecting the local wildlife of North Africa, the Levant and southern Mediterranean. In "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence [North] African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects

3125-629: A useful ally. However, as Arabic remained a language of high importance in Sudan and especially Egypt, Nobiin continued to be under pressure, and its use became largely confined to Nubian homes. Nobiin is one of the about eleven Nubian languages . It has traditionally been grouped with the Dongolawi cluster, mainly based on the geographic proximity of the two (before the construction of the Aswan Dam, varieties of Dongolawi were spoken north and south of

3250-407: Is a voiced labial-velar. Nobiin is a tonal language, in which pitch is used to mark lexical contrasts . Tone also figures heavily in morphological derivation . Nobiin has two underlying tones, high and low. A falling tone occurs in certain contexts; this tone can in general be analysed as arising from a high and a low tone together. In Nobiin, every utterance ends in a low tone. This is one of

3375-598: Is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as " Middle Egyptian ," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period . By the time of classical antiquity , the spoken language had evolved into Demotic , and by the Roman era , diversified into various Coptic dialects . These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after

3500-487: Is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt . It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest known written languages , first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC . It

3625-505: Is an example of Nubian Greek language: ⲟⲩⲧⲟⲥ ⲉⲥⲧⲓⲛ ⲁⲇⲁⲩⲉⲗ ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲩ ⲙⲱⲥⲉⲥ ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟⲩ, ⲃⲁⲥⲓⲗⲉⲩ ⲛⲟⲩⲃⲇⲏⲥ, ⲁⲣⲟⲩⲁ, ⲙⲁⲕⲣⲟ Οὗτός ἐστιν ἀδαύελ Βασιλεύ Μώσες Γεωργίου, Βασιλεύ Νουβδῆς, Ἀρουά, Μακρό This is the great King Moses Georgios, the King of Nobatia, Alodia, Makuria A plethora of frescoes created between 800–1200   AD in Nubian cities such as Faras depicted religious life in the courts of

3750-661: Is categorized according to the following periods: A-Group culture (3700–2800 BC), C-Group culture (2300–1600 BC), Kerma culture (2500–1500 BC), Nubian contemporaries of the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC), the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (1000–653 BC), Napata (1000–275 BC), Meroë (275 BC–300/350 AD), Makuria (340–1317 AD), Nobatia (350–650 AD), and Alodia (600s–1504 AD). Archaeological evidence has attested that population settlements occurred in Nubia as early as

3875-474: Is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, including a finite verb , which has been found. Discovered in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (dated c.  2690 BC ), the seal impression reads: Extensive texts appear from about 2600 BC. An early example is the Diary of Merer . The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. One of its distinguishing characteristics

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4000-676: Is interpreted to suggest that the C-Group and Kerma populations, who inhabited the Nile Valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers, spoke Afroasiatic languages. Claude Rilly (2010, 2016) and Julien Cooper (2017) on the other hand, suggest that the Kerma peoples (of Upper Nubia) spoke Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch, possibly ancestral to the later Meroitic language , which Rilly also suggests

4125-452: Is not a contrastive feature; all obstruents are voiceless and all sonorants are voiced. Stops may be either aspirated or tenuis (unaspirated), although there is evidence that aspirates merged with their tenuis counterparts in certain environments. The following table presents the consonants of Demotic Egyptian. The reconstructed value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by

4250-641: Is often decorated with symbols connected with the family inside, or popular motifs such as geometric patterns, palm trees, or the evil eye that wards away bad luck. Nubians invented the Nubian vault , a type of curved surface forming a vaulted structure. Autosomal DNA has been extensively studied in recent years, and some of the findings are as follows: 2008 results of an analysis by Hisham Y. Hassan of modern Sudanese entitled Chromosome Variation Among Sudanese: Restricted Gene Flow, Concordance With Language, Geography, and History included 39 Nubians found to be of

4375-399: Is sometimes reserved for the earliest use of hieroglyphs, from the late fourth through the early third millennia BC. At the earliest stage, around 3300 BC, hieroglyphs were not a fully developed writing system , being at a transitional stage of proto-writing ; over the time leading up to the 27th century BC, grammatical features such as nisba formation can be seen to occur. Old Egyptian

4500-424: Is the best-documented variety of the language, and has attracted the most attention by far from Egyptology . While most Middle Egyptian is seen written on monuments by hieroglyphs, it was also written using a cursive variant , and the related hieratic . Middle Egyptian first became available to modern scholarship with the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century. The first grammar of Middle Egyptian

4625-406: Is the tripling of ideograms , phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language, though it is based on a different dialect. In the period of the 3rd dynasty ( c.  2650  – c.  2575 BC ), many of the principles of hieroglyphic writing were regularized. From that time on, until

4750-463: Is transparently derived from the set of personal pronouns plus a connexive suffix -íín . Another set is less clearly related to the simple personal pronouns; all possessive pronouns of this set bear a high tone. The third set is derived from the second set by appending the nominalizing suffix -ní . Nobiin has two demonstrative pronouns : ìn 'this', denoting things nearby, and mán 'that', denoting things farther away. Both can function as

4875-546: Is unidirectional, i.e., /h/ will never change into one of the above consonants, and it has been termed ' consonant switching ' ( Konsonantenwechsel ) by Werner. Only in very few words, if any, does [h] have independent phonemic status: Werner lists híssí ' voice ' and hòòngìr ' braying ' , but it might be noted that the latter example is less convincing because of its probably onomatopoeic nature. The alveolar liquids / l / and / r / are in free variation as in many African languages. The approximant / w /

5000-532: The 5th century ; the Nubian Greek language resembles Egyptian and Byzantine Greek ; it served as a lingua franca throughout the Nubian Kingdoms, and had a creolized form for trade among the different peoples in Nubia. Nubian Greek was unique in that it adopted many words from both Coptic Egyptian and Nubian ; Nubian Greek's syntax also evolved to establish a fixed word order. The following

5125-676: The Beja , Afar , and Saho managed to remain autonomous due to their uncentralized nomadic nature. These tribal peoples would sporadically inflict attacks and raids on Axumite communities. The Beja nomads eventually Hellenized and integrated into the Nubian Greek society that had already been present in Lower Nubia for three centuries. Nubian Greek culture followed the pattern of Egyptian Greek and Byzantine Greek civilization, expressed in Nubian Greek art and Nubian Greek literature. The earliest attestations of Nubian Greek literature come from

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5250-565: The Coptic Catholic Church . Most hieroglyphic Egyptian texts are written in a literary prestige register rather than the vernacular speech variety of their author. As a result, dialectical differences are not apparent in written Egyptian until the adoption of the Coptic alphabet . Nevertheless, it is clear that these differences existed before the Coptic period. In one Late Egyptian letter (dated c.  1200 BC ),

5375-563: The Eastern Sudanic branch and that the peoples of the C-Group culture to their north spoke Cushitic languages. They were succeeded by the first Nubian language speakers, whose tongues belonged to another branch of Eastern Sudanic languages within the Nilo-Saharan phylum. A 4th-century AD victory stela commemorative of Axumite king Ezana contains inscriptions describing two distinct population groups dwelling in ancient Nubia:

5500-471: The Hill Nubian languages ( Nuba Mountains , Kordofan ). In recent times, research by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst has shed more light on the relations between Nobiin and Dongolawi. The groups have been separated so long that they do not share a common identity; additionally, they differ in their traditions about their origins. The languages are clearly genetically related, but the picture is complicated by

5625-603: The Kingdom of Kush . By the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (744 BC–656 BC), all of Egypt was united with Nubia, extending down to what is now Khartoum . However, in 656 BC the native Twenty-sixth Dynasty regained control of Egypt. As warriors, the ancient Nubians were famous for their skill and precision with the bow and arrow . In the Middle Ages , the Nubians converted to Christianity and established three kingdoms: Nobatia in

5750-524: The Muslim conquest of Egypt , although Bohairic Coptic remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church . The Egyptian language branch belongs to the Afroasiatic language family . Among the typological features of Egyptian that are typically Afroasiatic are its fusional morphology, nonconcatenative morphology , a series of emphatic consonants , a three-vowel system /a i u/ ,

5875-488: The Nubi language , an Arabic-based creole. Nobiin is one of the few languages of Africa to have a written history that can be followed over the course of more than a millennium. Old Nubian, preserved in a sizable collection of mainly early Christian manuscripts and documented in detail by Gerald M. Browne (1944–2004), is considered ancestral to Nobiin. Many manuscripts, including Nubian Biblical texts , have been unearthed in

6000-670: The Satrapy (Province) of Mudriya, and two centuries later by the Greeks and then the Romans. During the latter period, however, the Kushites formed the kingdom of Meroë , which was ruled by a series of legendary Candaces or Queens. Mythically, the Candace of Meroë was able to intimidate Alexander the Great into retreat with a great army of elephants, while historical documents suggest that

6125-588: The hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Demotic is the name of the script derived from the hieratic beginning in the 7th century BC. The Coptic alphabet was derived from the Greek alphabet , with adaptations for Egyptian phonology. It was first developed in the Ptolemaic period , and gradually replaced the Demotic script in about the 4th to 5th centuries of the Christian era. The term "Archaic Egyptian"

6250-479: The Afroasiatic family. Nubia consisted of four regions with varied agriculture and landscapes. The Nile river and its valley were found in the north and central parts of Nubia, allowing farming using irrigation. The western Sudan had a mixture of peasant agriculture and nomadism. Eastern Sudan had primarily nomadism, with a few areas of irrigation and agriculture. Finally, there was the fertile pastoral region of

6375-455: The Afroasiatic languages and dissimilar from those of the Nilo-Saharan languages. Claude Rilly proposes, based on its syntax, morphology, and known vocabulary, that Meroitic, like the Nobiin language, belongs to the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. The Axumite Empire of Ethiopia engaged in a series of invasions that culminated in the capture of the Nubian capital of Meroë in

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6500-530: The Baqt required Nubians to maintain a mosque for Muslim visitors and residents. This, and with the following Ottoman occupation of Lower Nubia in the 1560s, led to the kingdom and Christian Nubian society to disappear. The former Makurian territories south of the 3rd cataract, including the former capital Dongola, had been annexed by the Islamic Funj Sultanate by the early 16th century. Over time,

6625-525: The Bow", tꜣ nḥsj , jꜣm " Kerma ", jrṯt , sṯjw , wꜣwꜣt , Meroitic : akin(e) "Lower "Nubia", and Greek Aethiopia . The origin of the names Nubia and Nubian are contested. Based on cultural traits, some scholars believe Nubia is derived from the Ancient Egyptian : nbw "gold", although there is no such usage of the term as an ethnonym or toponym that can be found in known Egyptian texts;

6750-673: The Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, [which] further vitiates the Mesopotamian-influence argument". In 2023, Christopher Ehret reported that the existing archaeological , linguistic , biological anthropological and genetic evidence had determined the founding populations of Ancient Egyptin areas such as Naqada and El-Badari to be the descendants of longtime inhabitants in Northeastern Africa which included Egypt, Nubia and

6875-548: The Egyptian border at Wadi Halfa . Additionally, many Nubians have moved to large cities like Cairo and Khartoum . In recent years, some of the resettled Nubians have returned to their traditional territories around Abu Simbel and Wadi Halfa. Practically all speakers of Nobiin are bilingual in Egyptian Arabic or Sudanese Arabic . For the men, this was noted as early as 1819 by the traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in his Travels to Nubia . The forced resettlement in

7000-611: The Egyptian language shared closer linguistic ties with northeastern African regions. There are two theories that seek to establish the cognate sets between Egyptian and Afroasiatic, the traditional theory and the neuere Komparatistik , founded by Semiticist Otto Rössler. According to the neuere Komparatistik , in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/ : Egyptian ꜥr.t 'portal', Semitic dalt 'door'. The traditional theory instead disputes

7125-453: The Egyptian pharaohs were. Nubian pyramids were built at Gebel Barkal, at Nuri (across the Nile from Gebel Barkal), at El Kerru, and at Meroe , south of Gebel Barkal. Modern Nubian architecture in Sudan is distinctive, and typically features a large courtyard surrounded by a high wall. A large, ornately decorated gate, preferably facing the Nile, dominates the property. Brightly colored stucco

7250-528: The Egyptians referred to people from this area as the nḥsj.w . The Roman Empire used the term "Nubia" to describe the area of Upper Egypt and northern Sudan The prehistory of Nubia dates to the Paleolithic around 300,000 years ago. By about 6000 BC, peoples in the region had developed an agricultural economy. In their history, they adopted the Egyptian hieroglyphic system. Ancient history in Nubia

7375-598: The Late Pleistocene era and from the 5th millennium BC onwards, whereas there is "no or scanty evidence" of human presence in the Egyptian Nile Valley during these periods, which may be due to problems in site preservation. Several scholars have argued that the African origins of the Egyptian civilisation derived from pastoral communities which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese regions of

7500-678: The Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BCE. Various biological anthropological studies have shown close, biological affinities between the predynastic southern, Egyptian and the early Nubian populations. Frank Yurco (1996) remarked that depictions of pharonic iconography such as the royal crowns, Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture and A-Group Lower Nubia . He further elaborated that "Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Lower Nubia, and not in

7625-467: The Nile Valley, mainly between the first and fifth cataracts, testifying to a firm Nubian presence in the area during the first millennium. A dialect cluster related to Nobiin, Dongolawi , is found in the same area. The Nile-Nubian languages were the languages of the Christian Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia , Makuria and Alodia . The other Nubian languages are found hundreds of kilometers to

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7750-508: The Nile, flooding ancestral lands. Most Nubians nowadays work in Egyptian and Sudanese cities. Whereas Arabic was once only learned by Nubian men who travelled for work, it is increasingly being learned by Nubian women who have access to school, radio and television. Nubian women are working outside the home in increasing numbers. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Egypt employed Nubian people as Code talkers . Nubians have developed

7875-499: The Nobiin area, in Kunuz and Dongola respectively). The uniformity of this 'Nile-Nubian' branch was first called into doubt by Thelwall (1982) who argued, based on lexicostatistical evidence, that Nobiin must have split off from the other Nubian languages earlier than Dongolawi. In Thelwall's classification, Nobiin forms a "Northern" branch on its own whereas Dongolawi is considered part of Central Nubian, along with Birged (North Darfur) and

8000-573: The Nubian Kingdoms; they were made in Byzantine art style. Nubian Greek titles and government styles in Nubian Kingdoms were based on Byzantine models; even with Islamic encroachments and influence into Nubian territory, the Nubian Greeks saw Constantinople as their spiritual home. Nubian Greek culture disappeared after the Muslim conquest of Nubia around 1450   AD. The descendants of

8125-472: The Nubians defeated the Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar , resulting in a favorable peace treaty for Meroë. The kingdom of Meroë also defeated the Persians, and later Christian Nubia defeated the invading Arab armies on three different occasions resulting in the 600 year peace treaty of Baqt , the longest lasting treaty in history. The fall of the kingdom of Christian Nubia occurred in the early 1500s resulting in full Islamization and reunification with Egypt under

8250-399: The Nubians gradually converted to Islam, beginning with the Nubian elite. Islam was mainly spread via Sufi preachers that settled in Nubia in the late 14th century onwards. By the sixteenth century, most of the Nubians were Muslim. Ancient Nepata was an important religious centre in Nubia. It was the location of Gebel Barkal , a massive sandstone hill resembling a rearing cobra in the eyes of

8375-443: The Ottoman Empire, the Muhammad Ali dynasty, and British colonial rule. After the 1956 independence of Sudan from Egypt, Nubia and the Nubian people became divided between Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. Modern Nubians speak Nubian languages , Eastern Sudanic languages that is part of the Nilo-Saharan family . The Old Nubian language is attested from the 8th century AD, and is the oldest recorded language of Africa outside of

8500-643: The R cemetery individuals were of a higher social class than the cemetery S individuals. The study analyzed the data they obtained along with other published ancient and modern samples from Africa and West Eurasia. The genetic profile of the sampled Christian-era Nubians was found to be a mixture between West Eurasian and Sub Saharan Dinka -related ancestries. The samples were estimated to have approximately 60% West Eurasian related ancestry that likely came from ancient Egyptians but ultimately resembles that found in Bronze or Iron Age Levantines. They also carried approximately 40% Dinka-related ancestry. The study commented that

8625-510: The S cemetery having more west Asian clades. the difference was found to be insignificant, and the study viewed it as likely to be a statistical fluctuation and not evidence of heterogeneity among males from the two cemeteries. Regarding modern Nubians, despite their superficial resemblance to the Kulubnarti Nubians on the PCA, they were not found to be descended from Kulubnarti Nubians without additional later admixtures. modern Nubians were found to have an increase in Sub-Saharan ancestry along with

8750-542: The Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian is probably more conservative, and Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern. Although Egyptian is the oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is very different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic languages in general, and Semitic languages in particular. There are multiple possibilities: perhaps Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before it

8875-402: The ancient Nubians still inhabit the general area of what was ancient Nubia . They currently live in what is called Old Nubia, mainly located in modern Egypt and Sudan. Nubians have been resettled in large numbers (an estimated 50,000 people) away from Wadi Halfa North Sudan in to Khashm el Girba – Sudan and some moved to Southern Egypt since the 1960s, when the Aswan High Dam was built on

9000-416: The ancient inhabitants. Egyptian priests declared it to be the home of the ancient deity Amun , further enhancing Nepata as an ancient religious site. This was the case for both Egyptians and Nubians. Egyptian and Nubian deities alike were worshipped in Nubia for 2,500 years, even while Nubia was under the control of the New Kingdom of Egypt. Nubian kings and queens were buried near Gebel Barkal, in pyramids as

9125-601: The ancient peoples of the C-Group and Kerma civilizations spoke Afroasiatic languages of the Berber and Cushitic branches, respectively. They propose that the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of Berber or proto-Highland East Cushitic origin, including the terms for sheep/goatskin, hen/cock, livestock enclosure, butter and milk. This in turn,

9250-876: The banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt and northern Sudan by approximately 610,000 Nubians. In 1996 there were 295,000 Nobiin speakers in Sudan , and in 2006 there were 310,000 Nobiin speakers in Egypt . It is spoken by the Fedicca in Egypt and the Mahas and Halfawi tribes in Sudan. Present-day Nobiin speakers are almost universally multilingual in local varieties of Arabic , generally speaking Modern Standard Arabic (for official purposes) as well as Saʽidi Arabic , Egyptian Arabic , or Sudanese Arabic . Many Nobiin-speaking Nubians were forced to relocate in 1963–1964 to make room for

9375-423: The centre of power for Nubia and cultural links with other parts of Africa gained greater influence. Today, Nubians practice Islam . To a certain degree, Nubian religious practices involve a syncretism of Islam and traditional folk beliefs. In ancient times, Nubians practiced a mixture of traditional religion and Egyptian religion. Prior to the spread of Islam, many Nubians practiced Christianity. Beginning in

9500-829: The city of Wadi Halfa on the Egypt–Sudan border and al Dabbah . Some Nubians were forcibly moved to Khashm el Girba and New Halfa upon the construction of the High Dam in Egypt which flooded their ancestral lands. Additionally, a group known as the Midob live in northern Darfur , a group named Birgid in Central Darfur and several groups known as the Hill Nubians who live in Northern Kordofan in Haraza and

9625-533: The classification of the languages spoken in Nubia in antiquity. There is some evidence that Cushitic languages were spoken in parts of Lower (northern) Nubia , an ancient region which straddles present-day Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan , and that Eastern Sudanic languages were spoken in Upper and Central Nubia, before the spread of Eastern Sudanic languages even further north into Lower Nubia. Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst (2000) suggest that

9750-411: The clearest signs of the occurrence of a boundary tone , realized as a low pitch on the last syllable of any prepausal word. The examples below show how the surface tone of the high tone verb ókkír- ' cook ' depends on the position of the verb. In the first sentence, the verb is not final (because the question marker -náà is appended) and thus it is realized as high. In the second sentence,

9875-589: The construction of the Aswan Dam at Aswan , Egypt and for the upstream Lake Nasser . There is no standardised orthography for Nobiin. It has been written in both Latin and Arabic scripts ; also, recently there have been efforts to revive the Old Nubian alphabet . This article adopts the Latin orthography used in the only published grammar of Nobiin, Roland Werner's (1987) Grammatik des Nobiin . Before

10000-410: The construction of the Aswan Dam , speakers of Nobiin lived in the Nile valley between the third cataract in the south and Korosko in the north. About 60% of the territory of Nubia was destroyed or rendered unfit for habitation as a result of the construction of the dam and the creation of Lake Nasser . At least half of the Nubian population was forcibly resettled. Nowadays, Nobiin speakers live in

10125-468: The eighth century, Islam arrived in Nubia. Though Christians and Muslims (primarily Arab merchants at this period) may have lived peacefully together, Arab armies often invaded Christian Nubian kingdoms. An example of this being Makuria, where in 651 an Arab army invaded, but was repulsed, and a treaty known as the Baqt was signed, preventing further Arab invasions in exchange for 360 slaves each year. Notably,

10250-637: The emphatic consonants were realised is unknown. Early research had assumed that the opposition in stops was one of voicing, but it is now thought to be either one of tenuis and emphatic consonants , as in many Semitic languages, or one of aspirated and ejective consonants , as in many Cushitic languages . Since vowels were not written until Coptic, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain and rely mainly on evidence from Coptic and records of Egyptian words, especially proper nouns, in other languages/writing systems. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by

10375-439: The end of a stressed syllable and eventually null word-finally: ⟨pḏ.t⟩ */ˈpiːɟat/ > Akkadian transcription -pi-ta 'bow'. The most important source of information about Demotic phonology is Coptic. The consonant inventory of Demotic can be reconstructed on the basis of evidence from the Coptic dialects. Demotic orthography is relatively opaque . The Demotic "alphabetical" signs are mostly inherited from

10500-406: The fact that there are also indications of contact-induced language change . Nobiin appears to have had a strong influence on Dongolawi, as evidenced by similarities between the phoneme inventories as well as the occurrence of numerous borrowed grammatical morphemes. This has led some to suggest that Dongolawi in fact is "a 'hybrid' language between old Nobiin and pre-contact Dongolawi." Evidence of

10625-547: The first known Coptic text, still pagan ( Old Coptic ), from the 1st century AD. Coptic survived into the medieval period, but by the 16th century was dwindling rapidly due to the persecution of Coptic Christians under the Mamluks . It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and

10750-461: The following Y Chromosome Haplogroups: Sirak et al. 2021 obtained and analyzed the whole genomes of 66 individuals from the site of Kulubnarti situated between the 2nd and 3rd cataract and dated to the Christian period between 650 and 1000 CE. The samples were obtained from two cemeteries, R and S. Grave materials between the two cemeteries did not differ, but physical analyses of the remains found differences in morbidity and mortality indicating that

10875-646: The following areas: (1) near Kom Ombo , Egypt, about 40 km north of Aswan , where new housing was provided by the Egyptian government for approximately 50,000 Nubians; (2) in the New Halfa Scheme in the Kassala , Sudan, where housing and work was provided by the Sudanese government for Nubians from the inundated areas around Wadi Halfa ; (3) in the Northern state, Sudan , northwards from Burgeg to

11000-452: The glides / w / and / j / . Consonant length is contrastive in Nobiin, e.g., dáwwí ' path ' vs. dáwí ' kitchen ' . Like vowel length, consonant length is not very stable; long consonants tend to be shortened in many cases (e.g., the Arabic loan dùkkáán ' shop ' is often found as dùkáán ). The phoneme / p / has a somewhat marginal status as it only occurs as

11125-655: The graphemes ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are used interchangeably. In addition, / j / had become / ʔ / word-initially in an unstressed syllable (⟨ jwn ⟩ /jaˈwin/ > */ʔaˈwin/ "colour") and after a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḥjpw⟩ */ˈħujpVw/ > /ˈħeʔp(Vw)/ '[the god] Apis'). In Late Egyptian (1069–700 BC), the phonemes d ḏ g gradually merge with their counterparts t ṯ k ( ⟨dbn⟩ */ˈdiːban/ > Akkadian transcription ti-ba-an 'dbn-weight'). Also, ṯ ḏ often become /t d/ , but they are retained in many lexemes ; ꜣ becomes / ʔ / ; and /t r j w/ become / ʔ / at

11250-435: The hieroglyphic orthography, and it is frequently written as if it were / n / or / r / . That is probably because the standard for written Egyptian is based on a dialect in which / l / had merged with other sonorants. Also, the rare cases of / ʔ / occurring are not represented. The phoneme / j / is written as ⟨ j ⟩ in the initial position (⟨ jt ⟩ = */ˈjaːtVj/ 'father') and immediately after

11375-519: The hieroglyphic script, and due to historical sound changes they do not always map neatly onto Demotic phonemes . However, the Demotic script does feature certain orthographic innovations, such as the use of the sign h̭ for / ç /, which allow it to represent sounds that were not present in earlier forms of Egyptian. The Demotic consonants can be divided into two primary classes: obstruents ( stops , affricates and fricatives ) and sonorants ( approximants , nasals , and semivowels ). Voice

11500-606: The important trade routes within its territories. Nubia's trade links with Egypt led to Egypt's domination over Nubia during the New Kingdom period. The emergence of the Kingdom of Meroe in the 8th century BC led to Egypt being under the control of Nubian rulers for a century, although they preserved many Egyptian cultural traditions. Nubian kings were considered pious scholars and patrons of the arts, copying ancient Egyptian texts and even restoring some Egyptian cultural practices. After this, Egypt's influence declined greatly. Meroe became

11625-464: The language's final stage of development, the Coptic alphabet replaced the older writing system. Hieroglyphs are employed in two ways in Egyptian texts: as ideograms to represent the idea depicted by the pictures and, more commonly, as phonograms to represent their phonetic value. As the phonetic realization of Egyptian cannot be known with certainty, Egyptologists use a system of transliteration to denote each sound that could be represented by

11750-406: The latter of which it shares much with. In the earlier stages of Demotic, such as those texts written in the early Demotic script, it probably represented the spoken idiom of the time. However, as its use became increasingly confined to literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, leading to significant diglossia between the late Demotic texts and

11875-640: The main vernacular of the Funj Sultanate , with Nobiin becoming a minority tongue. In Egypt, the Nobiin speakers were also part of a largely Arabic-speaking state, but Egyptian control over the south was limited. With the Ottoman conquest of the region in the sixteenth century, official support for Arabization largely ended, as the Turkish and Circassian governments in Cairo sometimes saw Nobiin speakers as

12000-497: The middle of the 4th century AD, signaling the end of independent Nubian Pagan kingdoms. The Axumites then sent missionaries to the Nubia to establish similar Syrian-based Christianity like in Ethiopia, but were competing with Egyptian-based Christianity, who eventually established the authority of the Coptic Church in the area, and founded new Nubian Christian kingdoms, such as Nobatia , Alodia , and Makuria . Tribal nomads like

12125-440: The minority language since the latter is tightly connected to the Nubian identity. Nobiin has been called Mahas(i) , Mahas-Fiadidja , and Fiadicca in the past. Mahas and Fiadidja are geographical terms which correspond to two dialectal variants of Nobiin; the differences between these two dialects are negligible, and some have argued that there is no evidence of a dialectal distinction at all. Nobiin should not be confused with

12250-532: The next three decades of linguistic theorizing about stress and tone in Nobiin. As late as 1968, Herman Bell was the first scholar to develop an account of tone in Nobiin. Although his analysis was still hampered by the occasional confusion of accent and tone, he is credited by Roland Werner as being the first to recognize that Nobiin is a genuinely tonal language, and the first to lay down some elementary tonal rules. The basic personal pronouns of Nobiin are: There are three sets of possessive pronouns . One of them

12375-518: The north, Makuria in the center, and Alodia in the south. They then converted to Islam during the Islamization of the Sudan region . Today, Nubians in Egypt primarily live in southern Egypt , especially in Kom Ombo and Nasr al-Nuba ( Arabic : نصر النوبة ) north of Aswan , and large cities such as Cairo , while Sudanese Nubians live in northern Sudan, particularly in the region between

12500-441: The northern Horn of Africa. The linguistic affinities of early Nubian cultures are uncertain. Some research has suggested that the early inhabitants of the Nubia region, during the C-Group and Kerma cultures, were speakers of languages belonging to the Berber and Cushitic branches, respectively, of the Afroasiatic family . More recent research instead suggests that the people of the Kerma culture spoke Nilo-Saharan languages of

12625-634: The people of Kerma, those further south along the Nile, to the west, and those of Saï (an island to the north of Kerma), but that Afro-Asiatic (most likely Cushitic) languages were spoken by other peoples in Lower Nubia (such as the Medjay and the C-Group culture) living in Nubian regions north of Saï toward Egypt and those southeast of the Nile in Punt in the Eastern dessert. Based partly on an analysis of

12750-525: The phenomena now recognized as a tone system. Carl Meinhof reported that only remnants of a tone system could be found in the Nubian languages. He based this conclusion not only on his own data, but also on the observation that Old Nubian had been written without tonal marking. Based on accounts like Meinhof's, Nobiin was considered a toneless language for the first half of the twentieth century. The statements of de facto authorities like Meinhof, Diedrich Hermann Westermann , and Ida C. Ward heavily affected

12875-546: The phonology of place names and personal names from the relevant regions preserved in ancient texts, he argues that the terms from "Kush" and "Irem" (ancient names for Kerma and the region south of it respectively) in Egyptian texts display traits typical of Eastern Sudanic languages, while those from further north (in Lower Nubia) and east are more typical of the Afro-Asiatic family, noting: "The Irem-list also provides

13000-512: The quality of the surrounding vowels. / ʔ / is not indicated orthographically unless it follows a stressed vowel; then, it is marked by doubling the vowel letter (except in Bohairic): Akhmimic ⳉⲟⲟⲡ /xoʔp/ , Sahidic and Lycopolitan ϣⲟⲟⲡ šoʔp , Bohairic ϣⲟⲡ šoʔp 'to be' < ḫpr.w * /ˈχapraw/ 'has become'. The phoneme ⲃ / b / was probably pronounced as a fricative [ β ] , becoming ⲡ / p / after

13125-870: The reality" that the geographical location of Egypt is, of course, in Africa. While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, the exact phonetics is unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. In addition, because Egyptian is recorded over a full 2,000 years, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from Modern Italian , significant phonetic changes must have occurred during that lengthy time frame. Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants. Egyptian also contrasted voiceless and emphatic consonants, as with other Afroasiatic languages, but exactly how

13250-411: The results reflect deep biological connections among the populations of the Nile Valley and further confirm the presence of West Eurasian ancestry in the Nile valley prior to Arab migrations. The two cemeteries showed minimal differences in their West Eurasian/Dinka ancestry proportions, formed a genetic clade with each other in relation to other populations, and had a small FST value of 0.0013 reflecting

13375-750: The reverse influence is much rarer, although there are some late loans in Nobiin which are thought to come from Dongolawi. The Nubian languages are part of the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages . On the basis of a comparison with seventeen other Eastern Sudanic languages, Thelwall (1982) considers Nubian to be most closely related to Tama, a member of the Taman group, with an average lexical similarity of just 22.2 per cent. Nobiin has open and closed syllables : ág ' mouth ' , één ' woman ' , gíí ' uncle ' , kám ' camel ' , díís ' blood ' . Every syllable bears

13500-599: The same graphemes are used for the pulmonic stops ( ⟨ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ ), the existence of the former may be inferred because the stops ⟨ ⲡ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ /p t c k/ are allophonically aspirated [pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ] before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants. In Bohairic, the allophones are written with the special graphemes ⟨ ⲫ ⲑ ϭ ⲭ ⟩ , but other dialects did not mark aspiration: Sahidic ⲡⲣⲏ , Bohairic ⲫⲣⲏ 'the sun'. Thus, Bohairic does not mark aspiration for reflexes of older *d ḏ g q : Sahidic and Bohairic ⲧⲁⲡ */dib/ 'horn'. Also,

13625-433: The script was supplanted by an early version of Coptic (about the third and fourth centuries), the system remained virtually unchanged. Even the number of signs used remained constant at about 700 for more than 2,000 years. Middle Egyptian was spoken for about 700 years, beginning around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent Second Intermediate Period . As the classical variant of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian

13750-575: The second half of the twentieth century also brought more Nubians, especially women and children, into daily contact with Arabic. Chief factors in this development include increased mobility (and hence easy access to non-Nubian villages and cities), changes in social patterns such as women going more often to the market to sell their own products, and easy access to Arabic newspapers. In urban areas, many Nubian women go to school and are fluent in Arabic; they usually address their children in Arabic, reserving Nobiin for their husband. In response to concerns about

13875-474: The seventh century, Nobiin has been challenged by Arabic . The economic and cultural influence of Egypt over the region was considerable, and, over the centuries, Egyptian Arabic spread south. Areas like al-Maris became almost fully Arabized. The conversion of Nubia to Islam after the fall of the Christian kingdoms further enhanced the Arabization process. In what is today Sudan, Sudanese Arabic became

14000-403: The south, where Nubia's larger agricultural communities were located. Nubia was dominated by kings from clans that controlled the gold mines. Trade in exotic goods from other parts of Africa (ivory, animal skins) passed to Egypt through Nubia. Modern Nubians speak Nubian languages . They belong to the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan phylum . But there is some uncertainty regarding

14125-480: The southern Saidic dialect, the main classical dialect, and the northern Bohairic dialect, currently used in Coptic Church services. Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are written on stone in hieroglyphs . The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is zẖꜣ n mdw-nṯr ("writing of the gods' words"). In antiquity, most texts were written on the quite perishable medium of papyrus though

14250-625: The southwest, in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan . For a long time it was assumed that the Nubian peoples dispersed from the Nile Valley to the south, probably at the time of the downfall of the Christian kingdoms. However, comparative lexicostatistic research in the second half of the twentieth century has shown that the spread must have been in the opposite direction. Joseph Greenberg (as cited in Thelwall 1982) calculated that

14375-619: The spoken language of the time, similar to the use of classical Middle Egyptian during the Ptolemaic Period. Coptic is the name given to the late Egyptian vernacular when it was written in a Greek-based alphabet, the Coptic alphabet; it flourished from the time of Early Christianity (c. 31/33–324) , but Egyptian phrases written in the Greek alphabet first appeared during the Hellenistic period c.  3rd century BC , with

14500-485: The subject or the object in a sentence; in the latter case they take the object marker -gá yielding ìngà and mángá , respectively (for the object marker, see also below ). The demonstrative pronoun always precedes the nouns it refers to. ìn this íd man dìrbád hen wèèkà one: OB kúnkènò have: 3SG . PRES Ancient Egyptian language The Egyptian language , or Ancient Egyptian ( r n kmt ; "speech of Egypt")

14625-644: The values given to those consonants by the neuere Komparatistik , instead connecting ⟨ꜥ⟩ with Semitic /ʕ/ and /ɣ/ . Both schools agree that Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨ꜣ⟩ , and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the written language was based, but it was preserved in other Egyptian varieties. They also agree that original */k g ḳ/ palatalise to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others. The Egyptian language has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to

14750-473: The vegetables. Tone plays an important role in several derivational processes. The most common situation involves the loss of the original tone pattern of the derivational base and the subsequent assignment of low tone, along with the affixation of a morpheme or word bringing its own tonal pattern (see below for examples). For a long time, the Nile Nubian languages were thought to be non-tonal; early analyses employed terms like " stress " or "accent" to describe

14875-400: The verb is at the end of the utterance, resulting in a low tone on the last syllable. Íttírkà vegetables. DO ókkéé-náà? cook:she. PRES - Q Íttírkà ókkéé-náà? vegetables.DO cook:she.PRES-Q Does she cook the vegetables? Èyyò yes íttírkà vegetables. DO ókkè. cook:she. PRES Èyyò íttírkà ókkè. yes vegetables.DO cook:she.PRES Yes, she cooks

15000-497: Was Nilo-Saharan. Rilly also considers evidence of significant early Afro-Asiatic influence, especially Berber, on Nobiin to be weak (and where present, more likely due to borrowed loanwords than substrata), and considers evidence of substratal influence on Nobiin from an earlier now extinct Eastern Sudanic language to be stronger. Julien Cooper (2017) suggests that Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudan branch were spoken by

15125-812: Was influenced by its geography. It is sometimes divided into Upper Nubia and Lower Nubia. Upper Nubia was where the ancient Kingdom of Napata (the Kush) was located. Lower Nubia has been called "the corridor to Africa" , where there was contact and cultural exchange between Nubians, Egyptians, Greeks, Assyrians, Romans, and Arabs. Lower Nubia was also where the Kingdom of Meroe flourished. The languages spoken by modern Nubians are based on ancient Sudanic dialects. From north to south, they are: Kenuz, Fadicha (Matoki), Sukkot, Mahas, Danagla. Kerma, Nepata, and Meroe were Nubia's largest population centres. The rich agricultural lands of Nubia supported these cities. Ancient Egyptian rulers sought control of Nubia's wealth, including gold, and

15250-428: Was published by Adolf Erman in 1894, surpassed in 1927 by Alan Gardiner 's work. Middle Egyptian has been well-understood since then, although certain points of the verbal inflection remained open to revision until the mid-20th century, notably due to the contributions of Hans Jakob Polotsky . The Middle Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 14th century BC, giving rise to Late Egyptian. This transition

15375-419: Was recorded; or the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semitocentric approach; or, as G. W. Tsereteli suggests, Afroasiatic is a sprachbund , rather than a true genetic language family. The Egyptian language can be grouped thus: The Egyptian language is conventionally grouped into six major chronological divisions: Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using both

15500-530: Was taking place in the later period of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (known as the Amarna Period ). Original Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian texts were still used after the 14th century BCE. And an emulation of predominately Middle Egyptian, but also with characteristics of Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic, called " Égyptien de tradition " or "Neo-Middle Egyptian" by scholars,

15625-547: Was used as a literary language for new texts since the later New Kingdom in official and religious hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian or Demotic. Égyptien de tradition as a religious language survived until the Christianisation of Roman Egypt in the 4th century. Late Egyptian was spoken for about 650 years, beginning around 1350 BC, during the New Kingdom of Egypt . Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as

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