Corpus-based Grammars of the Historical and Biographical Texts of the 18th Dynasty in the Hieroglyphic Character: The Royal Inscriptions of Queen Hatshepsut

• Applicant: Dr. Marc Brose
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501128650

The project thematically continues the previously DFG-funded project ‘Preliminary Studies on the Grammar of the Historical and Biographical Texts of the 18th Dynasty in the Hieroglyphic Character - The Royal Stelae up to Amenophis III’, but in a modified manner.The royal inscriptions of Queen Hatshepsut (reigned c. 1479-1458 BCE) are now in the scope of observation. These texts represent a real counterpoint to the before investigated royal stelae: They were composed in a narrow time span (22 years), so that the investigation is approximately synchronic. Stylistically and with respect to the contents they are more homogenic than the royal stelae because they are concentrated on few localities (Karnak, Western Thebes/Deir el Bahari, Speos Artemidos), adding the fact, that the texts of the greater area of Karnak/Thebes were composed under the supervision of one single person, the chief architect Senenmut, and because the repertoire of contents with the main theme ‘Hatshepsut, the Innovator and the Saviour’ is far less expansive, but can be allocated to one single text register ‘God-King-Interactions’. The study will concentrate on the following focal points: verbal system, pronominal system and the catalogue of the synsemantic lexemes in form and function, followed by sketches about nouns, adjectives, numbers, orthography, lexicon in general, and phraseology. The results will be compared with the linguistic situation of Classic Middle Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000-1700 BCE) in general and the situation of the Royal Stelae of the 18th Dynasty in particular. These texts are also interesting with respect to two further grammatical features which were already noted: At first, they have a fairly high number of archaisms. Here it should be determined what quantitative share they take of the total volume of the grammatical issues in question. The second question is the visible ‘feminine shift’ of the texts, i.e. the fact, that texts which used to be composed for male persons were adapted for a female individual and show a shift from several person related masculine forms to feminine ones where they usually did not appear. Since the language of these texts is a traditional idiom, and several feminine forms were no longer existent or in decline in the contemporary language, it should be investigated to which degree the composers were or were not successful in this adaptation.As an addition it is intended to incorporate a major part of the chosen corpus into the online database ‘Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae’ of the project ‘Strukturen und Transformationen des Wortschatzes der Ägyptischen Sprache. Text- und Wissenskultur im Alten Ägypten’ (BBAW Berlin/SAW Leipzig).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants