Demotic Dictionary Project

A couple of years ago the report on the Demotic Dictionary Project highlighted our knowledge of the animals familiar to the Egyptians who lived and wro te during the • • • • • • • millennium from the 7th century B.C. until the 3rd century A.D. This was the time when Demotic was the standard script used by residents in Egypt who wished to wr i te in the Egyptian language; many Greek immigrants and their descendants wro te in Greek, which was also the language used for most formal government administrative records. We have been collecting the vocabulary found in such Demotic texts (both literary and non-literary) and studying its relation to the vocabulary found in earlier "classical" Egyptian texts and in later Coptic texts. "Copt ic" is the name not only of the latest stage of the Egyptian language, wr i t ten in Greek letters, but also of the Christian church in Egypt, which still flourishes today; it is f rom the latter that the term "Copt ic " is used to describe that period of Egypt's history which corresponds to the Byzantine period. From our studies, we have deepened our understanding of such diverse aspects of Egyptian culture as the legal system, the concept of the "he ro " in fiction, and the pervasiveness of taxes in almost every aspect of life (including death).