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© Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
Egyptian is a "dead" language, related to the Semitic languages. Today, the people of Egypt speak Arabic. But Egyptian was spoken for over 3000 years. And, over the years, it had several written forms:
Hieroglyphics: The form found on monuments, and some papyri. It is made up of little pictures (signs) which make up words. Hieroglyphics changed over time. The pre-dynastic version began with one symbol for each word. Old Egyptian combined symbols to form words, it had a thousand or so symbols, and spelling was not standardized. Middle Egyptian had 700 or so symbols, and the spelling was standardized (this was the Golden Age of Egypt, with most of the famous kings living in this era). Late Egyptian represented a drastic change in the language, it had thousands of symbols.
Hieratic: This is script hieroglyphics. It's form varied over the centuries.
Demotic: This was a later script version of Egyptian which was not based on hieroglyphics, but was phonetic.
Coptic: This was a late version of Egyptian which used the Greek alphabet, plus a few added characters.
Greek: Greek was used extensively from Alexander's time, on (including the Roman times). The Egyptian names (even from early times) that we use are mostly Greek versions (Cheops for Khufu, and Memphis for Men-nefer).
Arabic: The spread of Islam introduced Arabic into Egypt. Egyptian Arabic is somewhat different from other versions of Arabic. Some of the Egyptian places are known by their Arabic names (Cairo, Karnak).