Back(wards) to the Future

Why are space and time expressed by the same words? Does this indicate that the ancient Egyptians thought about time in terms of space? In fact, many languages, among them, English and German, use spatial words like “before/vor’ to establish relations of both time and space. What strikes us for Egyptian, however, is the sheer number of forms: we have at least 12 ways of saying “before/in front’ and 7 ways of saying “after/behind’. Why so many? Were they used in specific contexts? Or were they popular at different times? The first two questions relate to the functions of the forms, whereas the third addresses the idea of diachronic change. The last research question, which extends from the other two, is whether the use and change of spatio-temporal forms throughout pharaonic history can tell us anything about how the ancient Egyptians thought about space and time. Was it characterised or quantified differently to now? Can we assume that changes in language actually reflect changes in thought? Only a detailed linguistic analysis of these forms in a variety of documents across a time span of over two millennia will help us uncover their changing use and popularity.