Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

by Nicholas Ostler

  Confucius, Lúnyŭ† (Analects), xiii:3 (Chinese, early fifth century BC)2

  Two ancient languages, widely distant in their lands and their eras, are yet strangely similar in their careers. In their attributes they are unmatched, except by each other.

  Egyptian and Chinese are both vehicles of single cultural traditions of immense prestige. For each, the role as universal language was uncontested in their homeland. By the dawn of their recorded histories they were already established over the central zone of the lands where they were to be spoken. Each maintained this position of solitary and basically unchanging dominance for an awesome period of over three thousand years, or more than 120 generations. Yet, in each case, despite the fame and prestige of the culture among neighbours, who were often dominated politically by these powers, the languages never assumed any role as lingua franca beyond the territory that they considered their homeland.

  Another parallel concerns their scripts. Each language originated its own unique system of writing, based on pictograms in a particular style; and each of these scripts early attained a form that would not change. Each was later taken up by another people, and simplified to yield the basis for a phonetic writing system: Egyptian hieroglyphs were the starting point for the Phoenicians’ alphabet, and the Japanese drew their kana syllabary from Chinese characters. But in each case the original language culture disregarded the innovation, and maintained its ancient system essentially unchanged, despite the vast overhead this entailed in continuing lengthy scribal education.

  Their careers are parallel. For us, their main interest lies in considering how a language can achieve steady state, a kind of homoeostasis where it appears to absorb any perturbation that might affect it. This steadiness is particularly interesting in the cases of Egypt and China, since the languages have not simply survived in isolation, but can be seen coping with human incursions for much of their history, and occupy spaces large enough to pose difficulties for a unitary government.

  Another aspect of this puzzling unity, especially in the case of Chinese, is the strange coherence of the language itself. Certainly Chinese has dialects, and they are different enough often to be considered distinct languages. But this famous fact is less interesting than a less noted one: over 70 per cent of Chinese speakers speak a single variety, known as Mandarin or Pŭtōnghuà,* and this, the official language of the Chinese state, is spoken in more than 75 per cent of the country’s area. It has some local accents but essentially no internal variation. Since both the Chinese population and surface area are vast, the degree of uniformity so achieved is unparalleled in any other known language. We need to consider how it could have come about.

  The two also have some direct implications for the modern world.

  Egyptian, after all, did ultimately succumb to the incursions of its neighbours, carried out with steadily increasing permanence by waves of Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs, and now survives, if at all, as Coptic, in the liturgy of what was a foreign religion, Christianity. There is evidence here of what it takes to obliterate a seemingly eternal tradition in the land of its birth. How is immortality undone?

  By contrast, Chinese, for all the political reverses and atrocities its people have suffered at the hands of heartless foreigners in the last two centuries, has never been stronger than it is today. Its speakers make up one sixth of the world’s population, and it has three native speakers for every one of English. Nevertheless, over 99 per cent of them live in China, so it cannot be considered a world language—unless China is your world. Those who speak it often call it zhōng guô huà, ‘centre realm speech’: in that at least Chinese ethnocentrism is undiminished. There is still time to consider those forces that have kept the Chinese realm so firmly, and compactly, centred on its traditional homeland: will they still prevail in the modern world?

  Careers in parallel

  The remarkable similarity of the careers of the Egyptian and Chinese languages can first be displayed in the form of two chronological charts. Foreign incursions and cultural influences are marked in boldface type.

  Both Egyptian and Chinese history are made up of long periods of stable unitary government, interspersed with intervals of civil unrest, or at least disunity, when there were competing dynasties in different parts of the countries. Egypt has three such periods of stable self-government, the Archaic + Old, the Middle and the New Kingdoms, followed by a Late Period, when foreign rule was the norm rather than the exception. China also has three long periods of indigenous rule, the feudal age of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the First Empire of the Qin and Han dynasties, and the Second Empire of the Sui, Tang and Song, which then were overlaid by a succession of partial or total alien invasions.

  Both civilisations were formed originally along the valley of a single river, the Nile* and the Huang-he (’Yellow River’) respectively, although China expanded to take in the next great river valley to the south, the Yangtze Kiang.† And both civilisations demonstrated that, although they were not capable of defending their borders indefinitely, successful invaders stood to be absorbed in the long term. The linguistic analogue of this was that no foreign invaders imposed their language on the population, nor indeed (until the Persians and then the Greeks took Egypt) managed to retain their own language for more than a generation after mastering the country.

  These are both tales of solid growth and heroic maintenance, rather than massive spread. This chapter first sketches each language’s history, particularly noting the encounters with languages spoken by foreign intruders: these often came to stay, but tended not to supplant their hosts. Armed with the facts, we can then consider what might be the secrets of such language stability.

  Language along the Nile

  Be a craftsman in speech, thou mayest be strong, the tongue is a sword to a man, and speech is more valorous than any fighting …

  Instruction for King Medicare, line 32 (Egyptian, mid-twentieth century BC)3

  The origin of the Egyptian language must be found close at hand, in the Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic family whose descendant languages cover most of North Africa and the neighbouring areas of the Fertile Crescent (from Palestine round to Iraq) and Arabia. Egyptian has no close relatives in this large family, but its family origins do account for some of its characteristic features, mundane things such as the fact that feminine nouns end in -t.§

  A stately progress

  Archaeology shows that the Egyptian state was established first in the late fourth millennium BC, in the region surrounding the great salient of the Nile which was later dominated by the city of Wast (known to the Greeks as Thebes), hence in southern or ‘Upper’ Egypt. It is apparent that Egyptian was already the language spoken, since there are legible hieroglyphic captions on labels and pots in the royal cemetery in this area, at Abydos, from the early third millennium. In fact pre-dynastic sites, of this so-called Nagada culture, have been discovered along the whole length of the Nile from Aswan to the delta and including the Faiyum, showing that the whole area of ancient Egypt was already occupied. Since the surrounding desert remained uninhabitable, the kingdom of Egypt was always a ribbon development along the Nile. Traditionally, its history begins when King Menes unified the Upper and Lower lands, and set up his capital at Min Nafər (Memphis) in Lower Egypt.

  This achievement remained a matter of legend rather than history, since the king’s name cannot be identified with any of the hieroglyphic evidence, and there is no written evidence of separate kings in the north and south. Nevertheless, there was a tradition of differently shaped and coloured crowns for the two kingdoms, unified formally in the historical crown of the pharaoh† (in a way reminiscent of the composite character of the Union Jack). And the name by which the Egyptians always knew their own country was TaRwəj, ‘the pair of lands’.

  Thereafter, Egyptian has no history, in that it had achieved its historic domain, the Nile valley from the first cataract to the sea. Although Egyptian power would expand periodically and withd
raw again, up the Nile into Kush and north-eastward over Palestine and Syria, the language did not spread with it. For almost four thousand years its range stayed the same.

  Nevertheless, spoken Egyptian did change phonetically and syntactically over this time. The classical language of Egyptian literature was refined and established in the third millennium. Known as ‘Middle Egyptian’, its use was maintained in writing as far as possible until the end of Egypt’s civilisation, above all in formal and ritual texts. But evidently the language gradually changed on the lips of its speakers. Among a host of finer periods, linguists distinguish broadly an earlier era (3000-1300 BC) from a later one (1300 BC-AD 1500). From the middle of the second millennium, it is clear that the spoken language had moved on significantly.

  On the simplest level, the sounds of the language change: r and the feminine ending t are lost at the end of words, and (ch in church) and d (j in judge) are simplified away, replaced by simple t and d. But there are structural changes too. They are reminiscent of the way in which Italian came to differ from Latin, or Middle English from Anglo-Saxon. In the older period, Egyptian had been highly inflected, with a set of endings for number and gender; it had had no definite or indefinite article (corresponding to English the or a); and the characteristic word order had the verb first in the sentence, followed by subject and then object. In the later period the noun endings tend to be lost, but articles come into play, expressing the distinctions in a different way. The verb system becomes more dependent on auxiliaries, and so less highly inflected. Furthermore, the subject now tends to come first in the sentence (as it does in modern English).

  Take a single example, the Egyptian for ‘Hallowed be thy name’. This changed from

  uw’obu rin-k. tomare pe-k-ran ouop.

  shall-be-purified name-your let-do the-your-name be-pure

  The pieces of classical Egyptian are still basically there, but now put together quite differently.

  Charmingly, the first glimpse of this later language to appear in the record is the more popular style of writing seen under the religious reformer Pharaoh Akhenaten; this writing reform came along with official portraits that for the first time emphasised a pharaoh’s home life, with his queen Nefertiti and their daughters, around 1330 BC.

  Although the state religion and the decorum of official iconography were restored after his reign, the antiquated style of written expression never fully came back. Religious texts (rituals, mythology and hymns) did continue to be written in the classical form of the language; indeed it persisted until the end of hieroglyphic writing in the fourth century AD; but popular literature, school texts and administrative documents show that a different variant of the language was now being used generally.

  The language persisted in Egypt as the main medium of daily life for another two thousand years from the time of Akhenaten.

  Against this underlying continuity, the main dramatic interest was provided by contact with other languages whose speakers came to live in Egypt. There were four such languages: Libyan, Kushite, Aramaic and Greek.

  Immigrants from Libya and Kush

  The Libyans first put pressure on Egypt in the thirteenth century BC, a generation after the fall of Akhenaten. We read of desert campaigns by the pharaohs Seti I and Ramses II, but there appears to have been a steady trickle of immigration. Companies of Libyan troops, notably the Qahaq, Shardana and Mashwash, were accepted into the Egyptian army as auxiliaries.4 Ramses’ successor Merneptah (1211-1202) reports a massive victory against would-be invading armies of Libyan peoples, Libu, Mashwash and Tjehenu. And Ramses III, a generation later, tells of similar defensive actions c. 1179 and 1176. Nevertheless, a steady infiltration into Egypt seems to have continued, and the Libyan presence became a fixture in the Delta area. Ramses III himself had a Libyan slave, Ynene, serving him at court.5 Two hundred and seventy years later, the Libyan faction had established itself with sufficient stability to marry into the royal family. The XXII dynasty, ruling not from Memphis but from Tanis in the Delta, was founded by the Libyan parvenu Shoshenq, a Mashwash. It lasted 230 years, although it was riven by family feuding and was forced to accept a joint (equally Libyan-dominated) kingdom with a separate dynasty set up in another Delta town, Taremu (Leontopolis).

  The incoming Libyans would have spoken a language related to modern Berber or Tamazight, still spoken in much of North Africa. But the linguistic effect of their arrival is imperceptible. An Egyptian pharaoh of the twenty-first century, Inyotef, had had a dog called ‘abaqero, which seems to be the Tuareg Berber name for a greyhound, abaikour.6 And among the Egyptian numerals, the word for ‘ten’, mudjaw, is reminiscent of the Berber mraw.7 This is not much.

  To the Egyptian south was the land of Kush. In this direction aggression flowed in the opposite direction from that across the Libyan border. The Egyptian motive can be inferred from the transparent etymology of their name for Kush, Nubia—from nābaw (Coptic nūb), ‘gold’—although the chief mines were inconveniently sited in the eastern deserts. But like Egypt, it could also be seen as an integral part of Kūmat, ‘The Black Land’, made up of fertile Nile silt, the kingdom that existed only as a ribbon development along the great river. Egypt had been operating south of the natural boundary at the first cataract throughout the Old Kingdom, mining gold and establishing a settlement at Buhen, by the second cataract. It gained full control of Nubia in the nineteenth century, lost it again in the eighteenth, re-established control in the sixteenth and then held it for five hundred years. The Egyptian viceroy was given the title ZIR nasuwt kuš, ‘King’s Son of Kush’, to emphasise his centrality in the government. Around 1087 the holder of this office abused his position to occupy the Egyptian capital, Thebes, and then withdrew south of the first cataract to declare effective independence for Nubia.

  Nothing more is then heard of Nubia for 260 years, but around 728 the ruler of Kush, now based at Napata but investing himself with full pharaonic splendour, asserted a claim to celebrate the worship of the gods at Thebes, Memphis and Onw (Heliopolis). He was able to enforce his claim, and the next sixty years saw Kushites in (fairly loose) control of Egypt. The unity of the Black Land had come back to haunt its erstwhile masters.

  This unity was ended, as it happened, by a full-scale Assyrian invasion, coming in from the opposite end of the country in 664 BC. In the aftermath, a new dynasty in Egypt restored indigenous control within its traditional borders,* while the Nubian kings returned to their own land and moved their capital from Napata to Meroe, 400 kilometres farther up the Nile. There they founded the Meroitic civilisation, which lasted until AD c.250, with an alphabetic script based on hieroglyphs. The language they wrote in this way is not related to Egyptian, and is not fully understood to this day.

  Once again there was no known impact on Egyptian as used in Egypt itself, despite the long coexistence of Egypt with Nubia. The details of influence are difficult to judge since we have no direct evidence of the language spoken in Kush at the time. During the period of Egyptian control of Kush, Egyptian must have been used widely at elite levels in its northern regions, but use of Egyptian did not survive the withdrawal of links between the two countries, despite the evident enthusiasm for things Egyptian which persisted south of the border. The mutual imperial adventure had lasted, on and off, over two thousand years, but it had left both partners without any lasting linguistic link.

  Another country where Egypt attempted conquest was the land of Canaan to its north-east. Since the earliest period there had been trade links with Palestine, and around the middle of the second millennium these became particularly strong with the Phoenician city of Byblos, which supplied cedar timber logged in Lebanon. Around 1830 BC, a pharaoh invaded the south of Palestine, but little is known of his motives or any consequences. Four centuries later, there was a sustained campaign to control the whole country as far north as the borders of Mitanni. This has been explained as an attempt to free Egypt once and for all from the threat of foreign domination, recently suffe
red under the so-called Hyk-sōs kings (a Greek rendering of hqR hrst, ‘ruler from abroad’). But there is no evidence, linguistic or other, that this dynasty, whoever they were, had come from the north-east.

  Whatever the motive, Egypt did succeed in establishing Egyptian over-lordship throughout Palestine and Syria as far as Ugarit in the north. This is confirmed by the Amarna diplomatic correspondence, which relates to the years from 1345 to 1330 BC, and is largely taken up with exchanges of letters between the pharaoh and many of his Canaanite vassals, notably Ribhadda, the ruler of Byblos. This part of the correspondence is exclusively in Akkadian. The letters from the Egyptian side are in quite good Akkadian, but the answers that came back are in a dialect heavily influenced by Canaanite languages.8 Neither side was fully at ease in this lingua franca. But the point for us is that after a century of political domination Egypt had not transmitted effective knowledge of its language, not even to kings and officials who were professing themselves servants of an Egyptian master.* Instead they communicated in the language of the principal eastern power.

  Competition from Aramaic and Greek