Ancient Egyptian Between Africa and the Near East: a Linguistic Perspective

Part of the SOAS Linguistics Research Seminar series

This lecture explores a selection of linguistic features of the Egyptian language, from its earliest attested stages, which shed light on its relationships with neighbouring languages to both the north and the south.

Ancient Egypt occupied a distinctive position between Africa, the Near East, and the Eastern Mediterranean, where populations, cultures, and languages interacted over millennia. By examining these connections, this lecture highlights the dual African and Near Eastern dimensions of Egyptian and considers how successive waves of contact, exchange, and population movement contributed to its development. 

Particular attention will be paid to the long-term interaction of southern African and northern Near Eastern sociolinguistic influences, which helped shape Egyptian and its place within the wider linguistic landscape of the ancient world.

About the speaker

Marwan Kilani is an Egyptologist and historical linguist, currently Lecturer at the University of Basel. His research focuses on the historical development of the Egyptian language, with particular emphasis on dialectal variation, language contact, and the sociolinguistic dynamics of ancient Egypt and the wider Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. 

He is particularly interested in the linguistic interactions between Egyptian and neighbouring languages, exploring how historical contacts, population movements, and processes of cultural exchange shaped the development of Egyptian over time. His work takes a linguistic approach to the study of the ancient world, integrating linguistic analysis with archaeological evidence and written sources to reconstruct historical interactions between the peoples and cultures of Africa and the Near East.

Image: Moxin Wang (Unsplash)