Egyptian language

The ancient Egyptian language (r n kmt; 'speech of Egypt') is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is one of the earliest known written languages, first recorded in the hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC, and also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as "Middle Egyptian," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were deciphered in the early 19th century.

By the time of classical antiquity, the spoken language had evolved into Demotic: its formation and development as a separate language from the Old Egyptian was strongly influenced by Aramaic and ancient Greek. By the Roman and Byzantine eras, the language later further diversified into various Coptic dialects written in the Greek alphabet. These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after the Arab conquest of Egypt, although Bohairic Coptic remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic churches.