Vol. I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

Introduction. Ixvii
Gesellschaft in iSga. 1 In this he pointed out in a. systematic
manner the details of Egyptian Grammar that have their counter-
parts in the Semitic languages, and printed a List of the words
that were common to the Egyptian and Semitic languages. Most of Recent views
based on
these words had been remarked upon by Brugsch in his Worterbuch,
. Brugsch s
but Erman's List heightens their cumulative effect, and at the opinion.
first sight of it many investigators would be inclined to say
without any hesitation, "
Egyptian is a Semitic language." A
very able comparative philologist of the Semitic Languages,
Carl Brockelmann, impressed by the remarks of Brugsch quoted
above and by this List, says that Egyptian must certainly be
included among the Semitic Languages, and that the more the
oldest form of it, such as that made known by the Pyramid
Texts, is investigated, the more convincingly apparent becomes
its similarity to the Semitic Languages. Like Brugsch, he thinks
that it separated itself from its sister tongues thousands of years
ago, and went its own way. According to him the Egyptian
language developed more quickly than the languages of the
other Semites, which was due partly to the mixing of the people
caused by the invasion of the Nile Valley by Semites, and the
rapidity with which the Egyptian civilization reached its zenith,
much in the same way as English has gone far away from the other
Germanic 2
languages. that the connection
Wright thought
between the Semitic and the Egyptian languages was closer than
that which can be said to exist between the Semitic and the
Indo-European. But he called attention to the fact that the
majority of Egyptian roots are monosyllabic in form, and that Monosyllabic
they do not exhibit Semitic triliterality. He was prepared to
admit that the " not a few structural affinities "
might perhaps roots.
be thought sufficient to justify those linguists who hold that
Egyptian is a relic of the earliest age of Semitism, i.e., of Semitic
p. 93 ff.
1 Das Verhaltniss des Aegyptischen zu den semitischen Sprachen (Bd. XLVI),
2 Es scheint sehr vieles dafiir zu sprechen, dass die Aegypter eigentlich in
diesen Kreis hineinzubeziehen sind. Je mehr die Forschung den altesten
Formenbau des Aegyptischen, wie er in den Pyramidentexten vorliegt, er-
schliesst, desto iiberraschender tritt Aehnlichkeit mit dem Semitischen zu Tage.
. . . Durch die Vermischung der einwandernden Semiten mit den alteren,
anderssprachigen Bewohnem des Niltals und durch die friihe Bliite ihrer Kultur
sei das Aegyptische viel schneller und durchgreifender fortentwickelt, als die
Sprachen der anderen Semiten, ahnlich wie das Englische sich unter denselben
Umstanden so weit von den anderen germanischen Sprachen entfernt hat.
Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen. Berlin, 1908,
P- 3-
e 2