This work is an adaption of my doctoral thesis completed in 2016 at Macqarie University. There have been numerous changes since this volume. Chief amongst these are the incorporation of new literature and comments from various reviewers, but also the additions of new reflections and insights on a myriad of topics from phonology of loanwords to concerns of local desert archaeology.
As this work must deal with the disparate fields of linguistics, philology, and history it is worth making the following terminological distinctions. The term ‘Cushitic’ refers to the East African language group and does not relate to the Nubian or biblical ‘Kush’. Likewise, when ‘(Old-)Nubian language’ is mentioned it refers to the grouping of Nubian Languages (Old Nubian, Nobiin/Mahas, Dongolawi, Kenzi) and not generally to any languages spoken in historical Nubia.1 ‘Semitic’ is used generally to label any Semitic language (Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Epigraphic South Arabian etc.), and ‘Ethiosemitic’ is likewise used for the Semitic languages of the Horn of Africa (in preference to ambiguous ‘Ethiopic’).2 The term ‘Epigraphic South Arabian’ is abbreviated to ‘ESA’.
When quoting linguistic material, the citation form of a word in dictionaries is generally kept (on occasion without divergent vowel diacritics), except for Egyptian transcription where this work regularises transliteration to the general standard present in English language Egyptology. Due to the widely different transcription standards present amongst Semiticists, Ethiopists, Egyptologists, Cushiticists, and more generally in African studies (Afrikanistik), it is not possible in this work to ascribe to a general transcription system for all linguistic material, except where rendered in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (Fig. 1). IPA notations are used in forward-slashes / / for broad transcription (phonemic) and [ ] for narrow transcription (phonetic). Uppercase V and C refer respectively to an indefinite ‘vowel’ and ‘consonant’.
In Egyptian philology, a distinction is made between Egyptian z and s only in toponyms and relevant linguistic material, but not in the running transliterations where z and s are in free variation after Old Egyptian. For the translation of Egyptian texts, standard philological marks are used, ( ), [ ], { }, ⟨ ⟩. The graphemic meanings of determinatives or classifiers are marked in square brackets where relevant, e.g. 
[hill-country]. The sign * marks a reconstructed pronunciation and/or root.
Citations of modern toponyms, like linguistic material, generally employs standard citation forms common in scholarship unless this spelling differs radically from a communis opinio in Egyptological literature. Little effort is made to standardise all Arabic transcriptions as this would hamper general intelligibility, so preference for Wadi Allaqi not Wâdi el ʿAllaqi (Egypt Working Sheet 1: 250,000) or Wâdi el-ʿAllâqi (Army Map Service, 1:250,000). When a placename is cited for its lexical form and linguistic purpose it is given in italics, e.g. ‘Aswan derives from Swn.t’.
Figure 1
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart of consonants (Pulmonic)
@ 2015 IPA
Footnotes are arranged in the style following Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, where the work is cited in full in the first reference and in an abbreviated form thereafter, e.g. P. Smither, ‘The Semnah Despatches’, JEA 31 (1945), 8 thereafter Smither, JEA 31, 8. This is the case except with authored papers in edited volumes, whose titles are still cited in full for the convenience of the reader. Journal abbreviations follow the standard Egyptological conventions. Journals not regularly encountered in Egyptological works are not abbreviated. The common abbreviations can be found in the list of abbreviations on p. XIV.