Demotic (Egyptian)

Early Demotic (often referred to by the German term Frühdemotisch) developed in Lower Egypt during the later part of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, particularly found on steles from the Serapeum of Saqqara. It is generally dated between 650 and 400 BC, as most texts written in Early Demotic are dated to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty and the subsequent rule as a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, which was known as the Twenty-seventh Dynasty. After the reunification of Egypt under Psamtik I, Demotic replaced Abnormal Hieratic in Upper Egypt, particularly during the reign of Amasis II, when it became the official administrative and legal script. During this period, Demotic was used only for administrative, legal, and commercial texts, while hieroglyphs and hieratic were reserved for religious texts and literature.

Middle Demotic (c. 400–30 BC) is the stage of writing used during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. From the 4th century BC onwards, Demotic held a higher status, as may be seen from its increasing use for literary and religious texts. By the end of the 3rd century BC, Koine Greek was more important, as it was the administrative language of the country; Demotic contracts lost most of their legal force unless there was a note in Greek of being registered with the authorities.

From the beginning of Roman rule of Egypt, Demotic was progressively less used in public life. There are, however, a number of literary texts written in Late Demotic (c. 30 BC – 452 AD), especially from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, though the quantity of all Demotic texts decreased rapidly towards the end of the second century. In contrast to the way Latin eliminated languages in the western part of the Empire, Greek did not replace Demotic entirely.[2] After that, Demotic was only used for a few ostraca, subscriptions to Greek texts, mummy labels, and graffiti. The last dated example of the Demotic script is a graffito on the walls of the temple of Isis at Philae, dated to December 12, 452. The text simply reads "Petise, son of Petosiris"; who Petise was is unknown.[3]

Like its hieroglyphic predecessor script, Demotic possessed a set of "uniliteral" or "alphabetical" signs that could be used to represent individual phonemes. These are the most common signs in Demotic, making up between one third and one half of all signs in any given text; foreign words are also almost exclusively written with these signs.[4] Later (Roman Period) texts used these signs even more frequently.[5]

The table below gives a list of such uniliteral signs along with their conventional transcription, their hieroglyphic origin, the Coptic letters derived from them, and notes on usage.[4][5][6]

Transliteration	Sign	Hieroglyphic origin[6]	Coptic descendant	Notes
ꜣ				Mostly used word-initially, only rarely word-finally.
				Never used word-initially.
ı͗	or or		ⲳ[lower-alpha 1]	Only used word-initially.
e				Marks a prothetic ı͗ or word-internal e.
ꜥ			ⲵ[lower-alpha 1]	Usually used when not stacked above or below another sign.
				Usually used when stacked under a horizontal sign.
				Usually used when stacked on top of a horizontal sign.
y
w	or			Used word-medially and word-finally.
	or			Used word-initially; consonantal.
				Used when w is a plural marker or the 3rd person plural suffix pronoun.
b				Used interchangeably.
p	or			The first form developed from the second and largely supplanted it.
f	or		ϥ
m	or			Used interchangeably. The second form developed from the first.
n				Usually used when not stacked above or below another sign, but never for the preposition n or the genitive particle n.
			ⲻ[lower-alpha 1]	Usually used when stacked above or below another sign.
r				The normal form of r when it is retained as a consonant and not lost to sound change.
	or			Used interchangeably to indicate a vowel corresponding to Coptic ⲉ, sometimes resulting from a loss of a consonant such as in the preposition r; also used for prothetic ı͗.
	or
l
h			ⳏ[lower-alpha 1]
ḥ	or		ⳕ[lower-alpha 1]	Used interchangeably.
	or		ϩ, ⳍ[lower-alpha 1]
ḫ			ⳓ[lower-alpha 1], ⳋ[lower-alpha 1]
h̭	or
ẖ			ϧ	Usually used when not stacked above or below another sign.
				Usually used when stacked above or below another sign.
s				Most common form when not stacked above or below another sign.
				Used often in names and Greek loanwords. Never used word-initially in native Egyptian words.
	or			Usually used when stacked under a horizontal sign.
				Usually used when stacked on top of a horizontal sign.
	or or			Used as a pronoun.
š	or		ϣ, ⳅ[lower-alpha 1]	Usually used when not stacked above or below another sign. The second form developed from the first.
			ⳇ[lower-alpha 1]	Used when stacked above or below another sign.
q			ⲹ[lower-alpha 1]
k			ϭ	Often written below the line.
				Originally biliteral for kꜣ. In late texts often used as q.
g	or		ⳛ[lower-alpha 1]
t	or or
			ϯ[lower-alpha 2]	Less common, except as the verb ḏj ‘to give’.
d
ṱ	or			Used interchangeably. Marks a word-final t which is actually pronounced, distinguished from the silent t of the feminine suffix.
ṯ				Originally the writing of the verb ṯꜣj ‘to take’, sometimes used as a phonogram.
ḏ			ⳙ[lower-alpha 1]	Used interchangeably. The cobra form is rare.
			ϫ, ⳗ[lower-alpha 1]

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.[8] Demotic orthography is relatively opaque. The Demotic “alphabetical” signs are mostly inherited from 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/,[9] 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).[10] Voice is not a contrastive feature; all obstruents are voiceless and all sonorants are voiced.[11] Stops may be either aspirated or tenuis (unaspirated),[12] although there is evidence that aspirates merged with their tenuis counterparts in certain environments.[13]

The following table presents the consonants of Demotic Egyptian. The reconstructed value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by a transliteration of the corresponding Demotic “alphabetical” sign(s) in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩.