Overview
The aim of this site is to shed lights on both the Middle Egyptian language written in the Hieroglyphic script, and the Coptic language. The main focus is the modernization of the written scripts of both languages using the standard signs. The site offers the following features:- Dictionaries of Middle Egyptian and Coptic languages, with a large varieties of searches.
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR), as a mean of recognizing text captured on images of both Egyptian, Coptic, and other selected, language and convert them to standard signs.
- Grammar of Middle Egyptian and Coptic languages to help understanding the rules of writing and semantics of each.
- Coptic legacy font conversion. It assists in converting a document (or even a whole site) of Coptic written in the legacy non-standard fonts, to documents written in the standard signs.
- Machine Translation of Middle Egyptian and Coptic language text (written in standard signs) to the English (or the selected ) google-language.
- Text-to-Speech (TTS). It offers a feature to assist in the correct pronunciation of words of both Middle Egyptian and Coptic languages in the native way. It is also applied to the selected google-language. Just click on the word or sentence, and you should hear the audio.
- Name Converter to Egyptian Hyroglyphic is using cartouche, color, epithets, wishes, zodiac signs for birthdate, and different moods.
- Resources of Middle Egyptian and Coptic languages and traditional text; such as Middle Egyptian historical literature stories and stelas, Coptic both New and Old Testament Bibles and Agpeya documents.
Middle Egyptian Language Scripts
Hieroglyphic:
Where letters were expressed as signs and symbols of nature. These signs of the language are used as ideograms to express ideas, feelings, and descriptions. Many of the signs are used as phonetics to express the sound of other words. The remaining signs are used just as determinatives to identify the exact meaning of the word class. This is the earliest version of the language, and is mainly used to write text on monuments.Hieratic:
Used by the priests of the temples to write religious documents on various religious occasions. It has the same signs as the Hieroglyphic version, but is written in cursive manners. Most Heretic scripts are written on papyrus, while the Hieroglyphic are mostly used in monuments and tombs.Demotic:
A cursive style of the Hieroglyphics, and was used mostly by the public. There were 32 letters in the Demotic version.Coptic:
The latest version of the Middle Egyptian language, and it was developed after the Greek invasion to Egypt by Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. The script was developed using the Greek alphabets. During that era; Greek was the language of intellectual circles in Egypt (and around the World), and so for Coptic; the Greek alphabet was adopted, augmented by seven letters derived from the Demotic script. Thus, the Coptic is the only phase of the Middle Egyptian language that was written in a way that makes the pronunciation clear to modern scholars. This phase is not only clear from hard letters to pronounce Arabic letters such as (ث ش ع غ ح ق) but it also introduced the vowels into the language.Ironically, the Greek script has been developed over time from the Phoenician script, which in turn has been emerged from the Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphics. If you study the Alphabet Table of the Coptic letters, and compare them with both the Greek, and Hieroglyphics, you will notice the similarity between many Hieroglyphic signs and the Greek letters. Specially the Greek letters:α ε ι μ η ο ζ γ φ.
Middle Egyptian Langauge Diagram
The following diagram depicts the effect of the Middle Egyptian language on many of the languages of the world.