Is there punctuation in ancient Egyptian?

For over more than 4,000 years ancient Egyptian was spoken and written in the northern Nile Valley. It is an autonomous branch of the Afroasiatic family languages. Over time ancient Egyptians resorted to four main scripts (hieroglyphs, hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic). Hieroglyphs, hieratic, and Demotic are logographic writing systems while Coptic is the only alphabetic writing system, derived from the Greek alphabet. Ancient Egyptian is written in scriptio continua, that is, there is no separation between words, phrases, sentences, … There is no punctuation stricto sensu like modern European languages for instance. However, during the second millennium BCE, ancient Egyptian scribes resorted to several means to structure the content of their literary texts. These means are referred as “paratextual marks” in Egyptological literature. After a brief presentation of this unique language and its writing systems, this contribution will focus on the textual production from the IInd millenium BCE, when (paratextual) marks flourishes in hieratic texts as means of text-dividers. In order to contribute to the typological comparison it will offer an in-depth overview of the recorded “punctuation” marks, which obey unspoken rules. Data will be regarded from a diachronic perspective. It will allow a discussion on their functions, uses, and variations in time and space.