Chapter 2 of Bard’s Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt is quite intriguing, explaining in great detail of the Ancient Egyptian language, how it came to be from archaeological excavations, evidence, and remains of ancient text in hieroglyphs and scriptures which gives us a sense of understanding what this ancient culture and civilization beliefs and ideas were.

It was interesting finding out that no one has found a correct pronunciation for the ancient Egyptian language and the language of ancient Egypt can only be interpreted through the writing systems of the remains of ancient texts and hieroglyphs that have been deciphered through archaeological excavations. There are a numerous amount of languages that linguists group into related languages which include the Afro-Asiatic (“Hamito-Semitic”) branch which is unique because the Egyptian language are only interpreted through written texts, while other branches of the Afro-Asiatic family where their languages have been spoken but no recorded evidence of written form. An example of this is one of the Cushitic language which is Beja where there have been evidence found that the Beja was spoken by nomads in the Eastern Desert.

Bard explains that there were different types of scripture and writing in Ancient Egypt depending on the time periods and media. The earliest form of writing were in the forms of hieroglyphics and pictographs. Hieroglyphic writing were used in many ways such as signs that  had a significant role in having a symbolic importance for both religious and mortuary texts and were more in a formal script. Another form of writing were hieroglyphic texts which were carved or painted  into artifacts, on the walls, ceilings, and pillars of temples, tombs, and on papyrus. Another form of writing that was used is hieratic developed which were written on papyrus with ink which was known to be more simple to write and record both hieratic and cursive hieroglyphs. One other form of writing which was developed in the 1st millennium BC that was found on the prominent artifact the Rosetta Stone is the demotic script that is read in groups of words and abbreviations.  Other examples of written text were found on fragments of artifacts such as pottery and limestone.

The Ancient Egyptian language and text is found to be an important record and data that has been collected and still being deciphered and analyized today because it gives the world history of Ancient Egyptian culture. It is still poorly understood, but the texts is still growing the full view of their culture, and what their civilization was like economically, religiously, and socially.