Ancient Egyptian was a language spoken in Egypt in antiquity, which became extinct but survived in a form known as Coptic until the Middle Ages. Situated at the crossroads between Northeastern Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, Egypt was inevitably confronted with multilingualism and language contact, particularly with Nubian peoples in the South, Asian populations in the East who spoke Semitic (Akkadian, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and others), Indo-European (Hittite, Luwian) and non-Indo-European languages (Hurrian), and, finally, “Libyan” peoples in the West who spoke Berber languages. The traces of such contacts can be discerned in the written record, sometimes in diplomatic and administrative documents, sometimes in literary compositions, but also as loanwords.