Completion of 37-year project benefits scholars of ancient
Middle East
A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday
lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they
expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government —
has been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.
The ancient language is Demotic Egyptian, a name given by
the Greeks to denote it was the tongue of the demos, or common people. It was
written as a flowing script and was used in Egypt from about 500 B.C. to 500
A.D., when the land was occupied and usually dominated by foreigners, including
Persians, Greeks and Romans.