Show phonetics of egyptians revealed in documents egyptian a tongue heard from before the days of the pyramids pyra down to the middle ages but unspoken lor for the last years Is giving up the secrets of sounds familiar to tutankhamen moses and his followers and cleopatra through research in coptic documents at the university ot of michigan while many of the writings of the egyptians have been preserved from the past on stone and papyrus the spoken langu language ago was replaced by greek during the years of greek and roman power it was revived later and as coptic it persisted until the tenth century scholars have been able to translate the written language with exactitude but have never been able to do more than guess vaguely at how bow the tongue of the pyramid builders sounded when spoken the clues to the egyptian spoken word are being traced at the university of michigan by prof william wilham H worrell specialist in coptic copt is the name now applied t to 0 the egyptian people e since their adoption of christianity although christianity is not at present the dominant religion of egypt centuries ago while egyptian was still spoken these people developed a method of writing greek in egyptian for or everyday practical purposes and to translate greek religious texts to do this the copts coats took the greek alphabet added six egyptian sounds and used the combination as a coptic alphabet to transcribe the current language of the time in his detective work for forgotten sounds professor worrell uses the science of phonetics which tells what sounds may be formed in the human mouth and throat and how and a broad study of all the dialects of coptic arabic and greek both of the present and as they were spoken and written in ancient days by starting with sounds used today in related languages closely observing spelling variations and words borrowed from other tongues it is possible to trace individual sounds backward in time by processes now known to be scientifically accurate finally arriving at forms silent for centuries |