On my post
> Semitic loan words in Egyptian language rose over the course of
> history. For instance there were fewer Semitic borrowings in Old
> Kingdom pyramid texts than in the Middle Kingdom and New Empire.
> Nevertheless, there are certain Semitic borrowings present in even Old
> Kingdom Egyptian, which Gardiner and others suggest may have come in
> late pre-Dynastic times. This would tie in with the idea of a
> "dynastic race" of the Gerzians being early-Semitics.
Gerry wrote
> Gerry: Correct me if I am wrong: Gerzians were pre-Old Kingdom, right?
> And if in fact this is correct, then early Egypt was Semitic. Is this
> in fact what you're saying?
It would appear that Gerzian culture was an amalgam of earlier (Naqada
II, Amratian) and intrusive elements coming from the Middle East.
Gerzian was immediately prior to the pre-Dynastic Hierakonopolis
chiefdoms who succeeded in unifying the country in Thinite Dynasty I.
By the time of the unification, the intrustive element had clearly
indigenised, but..... their leaders clearly saw themselves as an
"aristocracy" destinct from at least two other ethnic substrata (one
linked to the Sudan the other o the Libyans).
So the Early Egyptian language was Egyptian, with a thin (and
temporary) Semitic superstructure. The Egyptians in historic times
claimed this "superstructure" came from Punt (usually equated with
Somalia, but until we have better evidence of Somalian archaeology, we
can only conclude it was somewhere in the vacinity of Southern Arabia
(hence the myrrh trees brought back by Hatshepsut) or the horn of
Africa (hence hippos and elephants shown in Deir el Bahri).
Hope this helps
John