Reich - A Grammatical Exercise of an Egyptian Schoolboy

Egypt Exploration Society

A Grammatical Exercise of an Egyptian Schoolboy Author(s): Nathaniel Reich Source: The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 3/4 (Oct., 1924), pp. 285-288 Published by: Egypt Exploration Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3853930 Accessed: 19/09/2009 10:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ees. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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285

A GRAMMATICAL EXERCISE OF AN EGYPTIAN SCHOOLBOY BY DR. NATHANIEL REICH SOMEyears ago Professor F. L1. Griffith had the goodness to offer me some of his excellent collection of ostraca for publication. He presented the whole collection to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I want to thank Professor Griffith for his kindness in giving me the opportunity to publish the following piece of the collection. It is Ptolemaic in date and is a grammatical exercise of an ancient Egyptian schoolboy and therefore of particular interest. The ostracon is 14 cm. long and 10 cm. broad, and the writing consists of two columns. The column A on the right side conjugates the verb p-e-z-f which is preserved in the Coptic so-called "nominal verb " ncesq " quoth he," "says" in regard to an action perfecturn like "inquit" (cf. STERN,Kopt. Grammn.,? 311). It goes back to the Late Egypt.

jkq

c..

PI .dd-f or, as more usually written,

-

x

dd.tn pi dd-f= "(that is) what he said," which is the younger equivalent of the old (SETHE,Nominalsatz im Aeg. und Kopt., ? 40). The column B on the left side conjugates the same verb in the form p-e.z-w n-f nezxanaq "they said to him," "one said to him" or also "they called him (by the name of)." The order of the conjugation in the singular is that to which we are used: 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person (masc. and fern.), but the plural has in both columns the order 3rd, 1st and 2nd person. I believe that this order is due merely to the accident that the boy made the mistake in the column A and was, therefore, forced to keep the same order in the column B for the corresponding forms. By the same accident the pupil omitted, probably, in the singular the 2nd person of the feminine in the column A and omitted it for the reason given above in the column B too. The forms for these omitted lines would be something like this in Demotic writing: '