Mittelagyptisch: Grammatik fur Anfanger.

• Author: Depuydt, Leo
• Position: Book Review

Mittelagyptisch: Grammatik fur Anfanger, 6th, rev. ed. By ERHART GRAEFE, with Jochem Kahl. Mainz: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2001. Pp. xix + 262. DM 78 (paper).

Textbook activity in Middle Egyptian, spoken about 2000 B.C. and imitated reverentially for centuries with varying degrees of approximation and influence from spoken Egyptian, continues unabated. Since B. Ockinga's Mittelagyptische Grundgrammatik (Mainz: von Zabern, 1998) (cf. JAOS 119 [1999]: 81-85), three more have appeared: M. Malaise and J. Winand's Grammaire raisonnee de l'egyptien classique (Liege: C.I.P.L., 1999) (cf. W. Schenkel, Bibliotheca Orientalis 58 [2001]: 5-41); J. P. Allen's Middle Egyptian (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000); and part I of this writer's Fundamentals of Egyptian Grammar (Norton, Mass.: Frog, 1999). The present grammar is the fifth revision of one first published in the late 1980s.

As an object of analysis, Middle Egyptian is more an intellectual problem of a peculiar nature than a language. The lack of vowels in hieroglyphic writing makes many verb forms whose existence is accepted in general difficult to identify positively in a majority of specific instances in texts. Evaluating specific verb forms necessitates degrees of elaboration that may try the patience of those wishing "just" to read Middle Egyptian. Abbreviated presentations of Middle Egyptian grammar are therefore to some extent necessarily misrepresentations. Such is the predicament of authors of introductory grammars of Middle Egyptian, including this writer, who is in between two parts of such a work.

In shorter accounts, choices impose themselves. In this respect, Graefe wastes no time in announcing (p. xiii) a key departure from earlier versions: the downgrading of the so-called Standard Theory associated with H. J. Polotsky and others to a historical curiosity, a display in Wissenschaftsgeschichte's museum. Beginners may wonder what they have missed, or they should rejoice in having been spared. At issue are two terms: "adverbial verb forms" and "verbal sentences." According to Graefe, "adverbial verb forms" used to be in, but are now out. They are "again" (p. 128) "verbal verb forms." By contrast, after having seemed nearly extinct, "verbal sentences" are now again spotted in large numbers (p. 56).

Terms are just labels. What facts have led some to call a verb form "adverbial," and others "verbal"? Classical and Modern Standard Arabic may serve to illustrate. There are two advantages...