Egyptian roots consist of consonants and semi-consonants only, the inflexion being effected by internal vowel-change and the addition of consonants or vowels at the beginning or end. The Egyptian system of writing, as opposed to the Coptic, showed only the consonantal skeletons of words: it could not record internal vowel-changes; and semi-consonants, even when radicals, were often omitted in writing.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
| Sing. | 1. c. iw (?) later wi. 2. m. kw. f. ṯn. 3. m. *fy, surviving only in a special verbal form. f. śy. | Pl. | 1. c. n. 2. c. ṯn. 3. m. śn, early lost, except as suffix. f. *śt surviving as 3. c. | Du. | 2. c. ṯny. 3. c. śny. |
From these are derived the suffixes, which are shortened forms attached to nouns to express the possessor, and to verbs to express the subject. In the latter case the verb was probably in the participle, so that śḏmii-śn, “they hear,” is literally “hearing are they.” The singular suffixes are: (1) c. -i; (2) m. -k, f. -ṯ; (3) m. -f, f. -ś;—the dual and plural have no special forms.
Another series of absolute pronouns is: (2) m. ṯwt, ṯw; f. ṯmt, ṯm; (3) m. śwt, św; f. śtt, śt. Of these ṯwt, ṯmt, &c., are emphatic forms.
Many of the above absolute pronouns were almost obsolete even in the Old Kingdom. In ordinary texts some survive, especially as objects of verbs, namely, wi, tw, tn, sw, st. The suffixes of all numbers and persons except the dual were in full use throughout, to Coptic; sn, however, giving way to a new suffix, -w, which developed first in the New Kingdom.
Another absolute pronoun of the first person is ink,
like Heb. יכנא. It is associated with a series for the second and third persons: nt-k, nt-ṯ, nt-f, nt-śn, &c.; but from their history, use and form, it seems probable that the last are of later formation, and are not to be connected with the Semitic pronouns (chiefly of the 2nd person) resembling them.
DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS