Language

Written records of the ancient Egyptian language have been dated from about 3,200 BC. Egyptian is part of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages and is related to Berber and Semitic (languages such as Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya and Hebrew). The language survived until the 5th century AD in the form of Demotic and until the Middle Ages in the form of Coptic, giving it a lifespan of over four millennia, and making it one of the oldest recorded languages known.

The national language of modern day Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic Egyptian as the language of daily life in the centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Coptic is still used as a liturgical language by the Coptic Church.