Abstract:

In a review article of the first edition of the Hieratic text in P. Vandier, an attempt is made to locate the linguistic usage of the story on the recto in Egyptian diachrony. Taken as a corpus consistently and coherently representative and état de langue, the text is systematically scanned for grammatical features and feature clusters as cumulative indications of affinity with Late Egyptian or alternatively Demotic. The Hieratic script notwithstanding, the linguistic picture observed — remarkably rich and varied — is that of an Early Demotic linguistic system, strikingly similar to that of P. Rylands IX. The evidence points insistently to Demotic (or post-LE) typology, while presenting virtually no unambiguous evidence of Late Egyptian grammar associations.
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