The "Diachronic Grammar of Egyptian and Coptic" represents an important desideratum of Egyptological research. The richness of texts (for Egyptian alone, the Berlin dictionary project assumes a corpus of about 10 million words) and the breadth of philological and linguistic interpretations available make possible a detailed historical account that can at the same time meet the requirements of individual grammars.

As a reference work for philologists and as an innovative contribution to the linguistic analysis of Egyptian and Coptic in synchronic and diachronic terms, our grammar will appeal to a very broad professional community, consisting of Egyptologists (and demotists) and Coptologists on the one hand, and linguists (and comparative linguists) on the other. It is our goal that the Basel Grammar will replace existing grammars and individual monographs in the field of Egyptian language research and establish itself as an international reference work on all aspects of the Egyptian and Coptic languages for several decades to come. Although not primarily intended for the purposes of academic instruction in Egyptian and Coptic, the Basel Historical Grammar will also provide the linguistically literate reader with the opportunity to learn in detail about all linguistic phenomena of the language.

The project outline in English provides information on the contents of the planned four volumes.

Matthias Müller coordinates on the one hand the work in the corpus area of the linguistic stages of recent Egyptian (primarily New Egyptian & Coptic), and on the other hand is specifically responsible for the coordination of the areas of phonology and morphology in the linguistic area.

Andréas Stauder is responsible for the preparation of the empirical material from older Egyptian and coordinates the areas of syntax and pragmatics within the project.

Sami Uljas strengthens the project team with his expertise in the field of modal forms of Egyptian.

In order to incorporate the grammatical phenomena of demotic more strongly into the project, Ghislaine Widmer from Geneva, a proven expert in the field of demotic studies, will join the project. In addition to her expertise in this special field of Egyptian language, it is her previous research on the problems of demotic graphematics that predestines her to be the coordinator of the graphematics section.