Preliminary Studies on the Grammar of the Historical and Biographical Texts of the 18th Dynasty in the Hieroglyphic Character - The Royal Stelae up to Amenophis III.

• Applicant: Dr. Marc Brose
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 325109157

Out of the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt (ca. 1530-1292 BC) a mass of hieroglyphic texts have survived which run under the term decorum in the recent discourse in Egyptology. Their majority is collected in the master edition of the Urkunden der 18. Dynastie. This collection represents the material basis for any kind of historical research of the 18th dynasty until today. Otherwise, in the area of language, these texts were and are disregarded to a great extent. Usually classified as a type of late Middle Egyptian and in detail scarcely investigated as independent corpus because of their lack of homogeneity they lead a miserable existence within the exploration of the Egyptian language and are generally considered as evidence for the far away Classical Middle Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000-1700 BC) until recent times, whereas they show a significant difference from that idiom in more detailed observation. The project has the aim to fill the mentioned gap in the research of the Egyptian language. On the basis of a selected set of main fields of grammar (verbal system, system of pronouns, functional words in use and frequency) the idiomatical features of the texts of the decorum of the 18th dynasty shall be recorded. The collection of the material shall occur as statistical investigation with Middle Egyptian grammar as blueprint. As representative corpus the royal stelae of the 18th dynasty up to Amenhotep III. are chosen because they show a minimum of homogeneity and are consistently contemporary compositions. Thereafter several diachronic comparisons shall be made with the main steps of the Egyptian language bordering the royal stelae of the 18th dynasty, Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian, and also with the idiom of the royal stelae of the late 17th dynasty and the Amarna- and Postamarna-period bordering the corpus proximately. Finally the idiom shall be fixed in the maze of Egyptian language history as exactly as possible. As free gift it is intended to incorporate the chosen corpus in the online database Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae of the project Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der Ägyptischen Sprache. Text- und Wissenskultur im Alten Ägypten of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin and the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants