When did Egyptians stop being able to read hieroglyphs? And why?
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2024
- Egyptian Hieroglyphs are one of the most well known writing systems from the ancient world, and they were employed for over three thousand years, from the Old Kingdom period through the Roman era. Now, though, they are no longer used as a script. So when, and why, did they die out?
SOURCES:
The Final Pagan Generation, Watts
The Rise of Western Christendom, Brown
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, Riggs
Correction: “Hieroglyphs” is the actual term, not “Hieroglyphics”, which is a collection of hieroglyphs. Did not catch that while doing the editing. Apologies everyone
FYI the red box around the text in the thumbnail makes it look like I already partially watched this video, since it's in the bottom left where the red progress bar goes. Nearly overlooked this video.
@AncientEgyptAndTheBible has entered the chat(David Falk).
To be fair, people have also generally used Hieroglyphics to refer to the script system itself, whether or not this is actually technically correct.
You mentioned your own error. Well done, sir!
For the record, "hieroglyphs" are the symbols, and the language. "Hieroglyphics" are the characteristics of said characters and language.
Simply put, the first is the noun, the second, the adjective.
its wild that the whole reason we know how to read heiroglyphics is because some soldier was like "huh cool rock"
Hmm.
'Bro, I bet that rock would fit _perfect_ in that hole in the wall!'
Only a fool would believe that story. Just like the dead sea scroll story. I don't know why us normal people think we're so important 😂
@@fromabove422 What’s the *real* story?
@@azlanadil3646 none of the publics business. Keep fooling yourselves thinking people who control information owe you the truth. Idk did we just start having "fake news"
A history channel with a real-life narrator! Thank you for not being a machine.
Most of those are Chinese propaganda trying to rewrite history incrementally.
what kind of stupid channels are you watching where having a human narrate is worthy of mention?
Check out toldinstone as well. Really like that guy.
*World of Antiquity*
Dam Skynet, the machine revolution is almost upon us.
I really shocked that they lasted 350 years after Cleopatra. I had assumed that the Ptolemaic Dynasty would have weened society towards Greek. Shows what I know.
The Ptolemaioi ruled Egypt like a plantation.
That would have meant creating huge turmoil (rebellions and widespread dissatisfaction) for no apparent gain. Egyptian temples and the Egyptian sort of 'state clergy' had been the administration for the country since forever, and it was a very functional well-oiled machine that the Persians and Greeks and later Romans saw no reason to get rid of. It helped them govern the land, get their taxes and keep the population relatively content and obedient. It's one of the reason Augustus took over Egypt as a personal kingdom and became 'Pharao', since to make it a regular roman province would have meant loosing this for him amazing administrative organization.
Ptolemaic Dynasty had ruled in Egypt for close to 300 years. They had absorbed many Egyptian ideas and it was important to them to present an Egyptian face to the native population that lived outside of the multi-cultural city of Alexandria. Alexandria was the most important city of the Eastern Mediterranean. By the way it had the largest Jewish population of any city . It was probably the also the largest Greek city in the world also. The Ptolemaic's were probably skilled at appeasing all for the various ethnic and religious factions.
My assumptions come from what happened to Anglo-Saxon England after the Norman Conquest. The was a slow change in language, though obviously the gulf between the cultures was far narrower, physically and metaphysically.
Yeah despite how pop culture depicts them, from day 1 the Ptolemies pretty much went native. It was a large, populous and rich country and trying to enforce a language and culture change would have been extremely challenging.
Instead the Ptolemies and their Greek speaking new military aristocracy did the simple thing and kept up Greek customs in private, but used Egyptian ones when dealing with the people at large. So Egyptian temple building, religion, art, writing. The syncretic synthesis occurred because of adapting these things through the new Hellenistic lens in private and in the royal court (as private as a royal family gets). The whole multiple aspects gods was normal for Egypt, and interpreting foreign gods as cultural variants of the Olympians was normal for Greeks hence Hermanubis and Harpocrates (Serapis was native, Osiris and Apis combined).
This is also how the Coptic language formed, through elite and international Greek influence bleeding through to common Egyptian Demotic
My hat off this man. I am usually hard to impress and have lived in Rome for a very long time. THIS was an excellent overview and filled quite a few lacunae I had. Thank you so much.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs are part of a complex writing system, where most signs have more than one possible reading, dependent on context (similarly to the Japanese Kanji characters). Signs could have both a phonetic (single consonant or syllable) value or an ideogrammatic (word) reading, but could even be utilized as phonetic complements or logograms (a written character that represents a word or phrase, like in Chinese), “reinforcing” the reading of words they were attached to. As many of these duplicities could only be interpreted by a native speaker of Old Egyptian, this system was very difficult to utilize for speakers of foreign languages. Hieroglyphs can be tricky because even through they look like pictures, most of the time the meaning of the sign is not the same as the thing pictured. It is a mixed script - some signs are alphabetic, like the letters in our alphabet. Other signs make a group of sounds, like a syllable. Still other signs are an entire word. Occasionally the same hieroglyph can do all three things. And sometimes, hieroglyphs aren’t pronounced at all - these are called ‘determinatives’, and they sit at the end of a word to give us a clue to the meaning of that word. Also, the Egyptian system had over 800 different signs, which is an extremely large inventory of symbols.
I’d be quite happy with only 800 😅 Japanese has 2200 in common use, Chinese 7000 for proficiency and tens of thousands of archaic and alternative forms.
Why would that phonetic and logographic component be a draw back to speakers of other languages?. Like you compare it to Chinese in that aspect but in Chinese, that it can be ready logographically and phonetically is why it can be ready by people speaking a different language and can be modified without making new characters, when it moves to new areas like Vietnam.
So why isn't that logographic, phonetic characteristic an advantage like it was for Chinese?.
And when the Muslims conquered Egypt in 640 A.D. from the Romans, the Arabic language would take over as the official language of that area.
@@ericponce8740that is false because egyptian was already replaced by latin and greek as official language and the main language in the cities. However, egyptian in the form of coptic continued to exist until around 19th century when it died out from daily use but still remains as a language of the coptic church
@@ikengaspirit3063 The Egyptian script that spread outside of Egypt was greatly simplified. Early Semitic speakers who evidently understood Hieroglyphs to some extent and spoke Egyptian copied what the Egyptians were doing with Hieratic at the time, and created an abjad out of Hieroglyphic signs. However, they assigned phonetic values in the very early Semitic language of the Sinai (probably ancestral to modern Arabic but still likely comprehensible to Caananite speakers), since they understood that for Hieroglyphs (and Hieratic), picture = first sound in word that describes the picture. So the 'house' Hieroglyph with the value 'pr' became the letter 'b' in Proto-Sinaitic writing, because the Semitic word for 'house' was 'bajt'. This Proto-Sinaitic alphabet then spread outside of Egypt, with Hieratic also spreading a little bit in its simplified form. Because Hieroglyphs were only ever used in monumental inscriptions and priestly writing by the Late Bronze Age, their usage became stagnant compared to the Hieratic (later Demotic) script for writing Egyptian, and the Sinaitic script, whose descents went on to become the dominant scripts used over the entirety of Afro-Eurasia west of the Hindu Kush mountains.
This is the sort of content for which I love CZcams. Thank you, great video!
slight error at 8:34: the temple of Philae was closed by emperor Justinian in 535 not 435 CE.
You have a good eye for day. Yes and logical. Justinian wasn’t born yet in the early 5th century.
@@jstantongood5474 537. Procopius Bell. Pers. 1.19.37
CE, you mean, AD
@@tulthor2967 no, I‘m not a christian, I precisely meant, what I wrote!
@@kaeruo519 yes my friend, I am not a Cristian either, but the years that were calculated by our Christian ancestors ( at least in my case ), were calculated after the presumed birth of the Christian God. If the nice, christian- hating gentlemen, that changed this word construction, were that bright, why didn't they invent their own hooish historic timeline, and call it after Moses, or whatever? If you are a former christian, and use this blasphemy, you are just low iq. If you were born in another culture, then use your own fckn timeline. This timeline was invented by christians. It's like saying, I don't say arabic numbers, because I am not an arab, I call them universal numbers. Purely rtrdd
Now that is an interesting question! And a great answer 👍 Any day I learn something new, is a good day. Thank you very much, and greetings from the Netherlands 🇳🇱, TW.
Syncretism of romano-egyptial culture could probably be the video of its own too. Because that is a really interesting topic.
The realistic Roman art style on the very Egyptian decorated tombs during the Roman period are a beautiful synthesis
This channel brings up some of the most interesting questions.
I don’t know if there is an issue of semantics I’m not understanding but I’m pretty sure hieroglyphs are attested well before the reign of Seth-Peribsen as we clearly have contemporarily attested names of Pharaohs as far back as Narmer and short ivory tags from abydos dating back to possibly 3400 BC.
Thank you for all your very educational videos :)
Thank you for answering my question so clearly:)
Interesting. Very interesting. Thank You. You have answered several questions.
That relief at 1:50 is so beautiful and detailed.
Fascinating. Captivating. Brilliantly written and superbly articulated with actual human inflection . I think he’s real ! ;)
Very good video. thats a thing i didnt think of before to look up. 5centurary cool.
when i visited a museum a decade ago they had a section where you could stamp out each letter for your name?
Do you know if there's any culture/prideful revision/use of it in modern Egypt? And any modern reading of it. probably for tourism if it is used.
the older I get the more I worry about these long term declines in quality of administration, due to economic difficulties. I mean in the long term humanity is still up, but I'd hate to get caught in one of the down turn periods where people didn't enjoy as much comfort as their ancestors
We are already there big bro
Extremely interesting topic.
Wow, I really learned a lot from this! I wish you had a SuperThanks tag enabled so I could drop you a few bucks.
Very interesting video. Extremely informative. One point of correction though, justinian was not the emperor in the year 435. 8:26 That’s 100 years too early for him. Theodosius the second, I believe, was the emperor in 435 A.D.
"Who's your favorite Pharaoh?"
"Caesar Trajan"
A very interesting video
Add this to the list of good questions
You've an error at 8:25, as you say the temple at Philae was closed in "435 at the orders of the Emperor Justinian"... but he was not emperor then, it was Theodosius. I think you've got the date wrong, and a quick look tells me it was closed in 537 on Justinian's orders.
could you do the same with cuneiform
Why the rock fall off 2cm slices, is it plasted over atone
Note also that our European alphabetic scripts, Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic *all* directly or indirectly derive from hieroglyphs.
Proof?
In Z33 pudding
What I would love to find is a serious general study of how Egyptian culture and history was understood/misunderstood in the centuries between the loss of understanding and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. we get some sense with the way Alchemy co-opts the magical aspects, but how else did the successive christian and islamic worlds view Egyptian history and culture? what myths and exotic interpretations did they make based on the limited knowledge they had?
Use good microphone or do aome audio modulation because it's hard to follow what you say
Please it's a humble request
Thinking in the very last hieroglyphics scribe, without anyone else interested in learning his craft.
"Everyone who creates gibberish must know how to read it"
Lucius Confucious Biblius 34ad
cool vid
What lake is in 24 second
I think you are missing an "able" in the title.
Stop being to read!
Thanks for that. All fixed
It's interesting to speculate if at any point the scribes also suffered from 提笔忘字
VERY GOOD 😊. VERY INFORMATIVE😊
First ive seen and heard of roman pharaoh tombs in egypt, its cool to see the monument style of both cultures collide
Is there any realistic chance we could've figured out the hieroglyphs without the Rosetta Stone?
👍 _!!_
Very Good!... #117 {5-15-2024}
We know exactly because the very last inscription written in a temple gate was found,
👏👏
When they stopped using them?
Have you watched the video?
@AncientEgyptAndTheBible has entered the chat(David Falk).
I don't think the average Ancient Egyptian ever "read" hieroglyphs. I think it was more ceremonial and decorative (spiritual), a bit like how Japanese emperors speak an archaic form of modern Japanese.
Ever try to show Cursive to a screen baby?
It’s fascinating how Egyptian religion remained an adversary to Judaism and Christianity for thousands of years, from the time of Pharaoh to the time of the magical charms.
Much of the occult is still based on ancient Egyptian religion.
@@annemurphy9339nope most of occult is based on Babylonian culture
@@wakilahmed5847 Much is, but the ancient occult has deep ties to ancient Egypt as well. The story of Isis and Osiris is still an occult belief, and Ancient Egypt is often referred to as the home of the Occult Sciences - magic and demonology, signs & symbols, and magical figures. Imhotep was a magician and priest physician.
About 1993
When they died out?
Ipostulate that today's Egyptians are not decended from the builders of the Pyramids and Sphinx
Because they moved on, same as almost every country in Europe used to use other scripts in the past
Those pesky Greek and Roman scribes (there were millions of them) intruded into surrounding cultures and took over.
Short answer: a long time ago
It is very easy to fall into anachronism when discussing historical linguistics. We commonly assume that all scripts function the same way, that they have the same set of features and functions. For example, there is reference in this video to the "grammar and syntax" of Hieroglyphs. What grammar? What syntax? How do these things operate, in a ideographic script? How do they operate in a logographic script? How do they operate in a syllabaric script, and how do they operate in an alphabet?
Here is the thing. There is no grammar, nor syntax, in an ideographic script. Only the author can know the meaning intended by a collection of pictures of things. "Dog sheep eat man." could mean the dog and the man ate the sheep, or it might mean the sheep and the dog ate the man. You can guess, but you cannot know. Even rules based on word order presume a community of folks who share such rules, which was never the case in early shamanistic tribal society.
That inherent ambiguity is precisely why logographic scripts evolved. Such languages solved interpretation problems by designating certain words as grammatical functions. This improved them hugely, but was far from enough to make them into something we might consider useful as a language. Just so, the failings of logographic grammar led to syllabaries, and the failings of syllabaries led to alphabets. At each stage, writing became less guesswork, and more precise.
In this sense, nobody ever "read" hieroglyphs. They decoded them, slowly and carefully. Further, the reason they stopped being used is because nobody could read them. They could only decode them, slowly and carefully. When something better came along, people changed their ways, because it sucks to suck.
If you ever meet someone who claims to be able to "read" sumerian, give them a sample they've never seen before, and tell them to "read" it to you. You'll see how it goes.
After the flood for there language was changed
I was surprised that used the word Pagan for the non-Christian's!
Actually the word pagan was just latin word for those that lived in the countryside.
That's why we have paisan in Italian and paysan in French, both languages derived from latin.
Only the copts could read them. They left with the gold.
This writing system may have came from Sudan
1:31
Um... This may be a strange question but, is Trajan sporting a cod piece or is he just really happy to see the lady in front of him?
The oddest Egyptian depiction of a Roman emperor I've ever seen to be honest.
It's a starched kilt, a common piece of clothing for higher class men in Egyptian art.
As to why would anyone want his kilt to be so starched as to be stiff? No idea. Maybe it was a sign that you didn't have to do manual labour.
today
Ayeeee first!
The original Hamitic people of Egypt have not ruled in their land since the 25th dynasty around 656 BCE.
The rulers of 25th dynasty were not Egyptians they were invaders from nubia
@@erreryhj
That's true, but nevertheless they were also African Hamites.
There are many genetic lines descended from Ham; some may have become black, but the Egyptians were Hamites and their origins are in the Levant.
@@annemurphy9339
Most all hueman beings descends from one of these six fathers; Shem, Hham, Yaphet, Yishma'el, Esaw, Ya'aqov.
Since its a genetic impossibility for the originally hueman beings on earth to have been "white people," everyone in ancient times were melanated hueman beings, which means Hham was always "black," as well as everyone else in ancient times, and your ethnicity is always determined by your father's bloodline.
Which means if you came from Hham all his children are genetically African (Hamites), that can not be changed no matter who he mixes his blood with.
And btw, the only "white people" who lived in that part of the world before Alexander the Greek, were known as lepers aka Levi.13:12,13.
Gen10:6-20 are all African - Hhamites.
@@TheZenGarden_ You make false statements from the start: it is absolutely possible for the original human beings to have been white. We know they weren’t black because black Africans carry the parental haplogroup of the Aborigine from which they descend, which precludes them from being first. And please list the scripture that ever says Ham was black. Ham is described as darker - in all probability the darker olive colors ruin we commonly associate with parts of the Middle East - but never as black. As to the leper nonsense, that is remarkably silly: fairer skin that can blush is the marker of the ruddy Adamite creation. Leprosy is a disease that could be fatal: it began as red patches on the skin, & then the patches of red would puff up before becoming covered in a true white, glossy scale. This stark white scale would stand out dramatically on any shade of healthy skin since no one - not even albinos, who occur in every ethnicity - are actually white. That is why Leviticus 13:13 says when someone is examined by the priest, if he has turned white [normal complexion, not the stark white scale], he is clean.
This reminds me of Akkadian. Akkadian was well known well into the Assyrian Empire. If I'm not mistaken once the Neo Babylonian Empire collapsed Akkadian was forgotten.
Not at all.For a time the persian emperors still used akkadian in monuments (together with elamite and persian).
I
I wonder how many egyptians were able to read hieroglyphs in ancient egypt. Maybe 1 % of the egyptian society?
What mean fish fish horse bird
They never could read Aliens did
About 20 - 30 years after inventing beer ??
take a shot everytime he says magical.
He said it like what, twice? Not a very fun game.
I'm drunk, as I also took one when he said magic. 😢
I briefly studied some ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs and apparently, as most people had assumed, modern Egyptians don't use hieroglyphics. I found this out by traveling to Egypt.
They devolved
Details . You draw a conclusion that hieroglyphics were used for over three thousand years but the data you support that with cover 2800 years.
Edit: at the very end their is a mention of 390-something AD
About the time that the left in Egypt introduced New Math
The flood
When they stopped being Atlantians
I can't help it but his voice and speech makes me imagine a big beaver narrating this😂
𓅓𓄿𓇋𓄡𓅫
only about 5% of the population could read hieroglyphs none in inner africa could read them at anytime cleopatra was the only ptolomy that could read them
And why are artefacts like this constantly destroyed religion evil religion 😢
First when the Egyptians adopted the Greek alphabet, and established the Coptic language, which become the most advanced form of the Egyptian language, but ultimately when Egypt was colonized by the Arab-Muslims, who tried to enforce the Arabic language, what forced the native Egyptians, who tried to preserve their local culture, to focus everything around the Coptic language, which then replaced all the more primitive forms of the Egyptian language, as the only advanced alternative to the Arabic language.
That makes sense
Go to: playback settings: speed: 1.25
Thank me in 7 minutes and 32 seconds.
Why is everyone in such a hurry nowadays 😭
Egyptians never lost the ability to read hieroglyphics. The people who conquered them and usurped the identity are the ones who lost it.
The must have started modeling their public education system on the Americans’
Or maybe modern Egyptians are not the original kemet civilization
MASAR civilisation.
Some are some aren’t but modern Egyptians are the closest descendants to the ancient Egyptians than any other people
For the same, sad reasons that most Z gens are illiterate. Human declination.
Because they did not invent it. They came upon it!
Okay, hold on. .. Aren't hieroglyphics basically Emojis?
I don't know your age or anything like that, but your narration contains a growing change in American English among younger people, one that I must say I do not like. In words like "written", with a tt just before a final en, you give it a glottal stop, so that the tt disappears and comes out at ri'-un. The standard has been rit' en.....To my ear, this sounds like Black dialect or like regional UK dialect. Not appealing.
So the ability to read hieroglyphs disappeared when the white people disappeared from Egypt, and the ability to read hieroglyphs returned when white people returned.
Kind of like how Rameses had red hair and built pyramids, Attila the Hun had red hair but the Chinese pyramids stopped being built when red-haired people disappeared from China, and the ability to build pyramids also disappeared in South America along with the disappearance of the blonde mummies found there.
In a related pattern, the Stone Age ended with the arrival of Europeans in North America, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. Since the Stone Age had ended about 4,000 years earlier in the developed world, and 4,000 years wasn't long enough for the other places to catch up, it's probable that they never would have caught up.
You mean when they were conquered and converted to another religion FORCEFULLY ?... 😏
to which religion?
@@FrankoB469 from an ancient Polytheistic to Monotheistic one...
@@SkyFly19853 which one is monotheistic? And who conqured them?
@@FrankoB469
that one... you gotta do some research...
@@SkyFly19853you sure you dont need to do the research instead?
The anglos are always the reason for the lost languages and writing. I’m sure they were forbidden to use hyroglypics and threatened with deletion. SMH
The pyramid was before the flood and also Egypt was conquered by different cultures.
They never could read hieroglyphs. The y did not build anything in Egypt. They just found everything. The building had been done hundreds of thousands of years before there were any Egyptians. So how could they stop being able to read something that came millennia before they even existed?
I want that stuff you’re sniffing
Quiete simple though? There arent Egyptians there, only Arabs.
Magical thinking = christianity Fact
What a pity. A truly unique and original writing system like Sumerian cuneiform, Chinese characters, Mayan glyphs, Harrapan symbols. Run of the mill alphabets is something everyone used and is merely derivative, lacks uniqueness, utilitarian and soulless.
Every writing system is unique...
@@raptor4916 not alphabets … they all originated with Phoenician writing simplified from Egyptian hieroglyphics. So all alphabets are derivative of a derivative. Unoriginal. Lesser than.
I took three years of Japanese in highschool, and three years of Mandarin Chinese at University (Chinese was my minor). Interesting, but these writing systems have significant drawbacks. Japanese especially, has significant problems--it is a fun novelty until you're forced to use it for your professional, everyday life--then you will be less enthusiastic about it. There is an excellent reason why Korea and Viet Nam both abandoned such writing systems.
@@stevens1041 Korea less so, but Vietnam adopting the Latin alphabet is a heresy. Vietnamnese have lost a bit of themselves, diminished their civilization by adopting an alien writing system. They are lesser than now.
@@stevens1041 This right here. Novelty or unique doesn’t equate good/better. The everyday use and ease of use is most important. I work with cars and engineers are well known for their unique or novelty creations. These often fail in everyday use and are just annoying. Same can be applied here.
They stopped when the original Black inhabitants fled and the people who live there now came in. Just think. Italians language is similar to Latin that Romans spoke and they can understand it if they try. Arabic is the polar opposite of Ancient Egyptian (Kemet) language and the current inhabitants cannot understand it. Guess why.
Okay, then why can’t the descendants of the original Egyptians who fled elsewhere read Kemet either?
@@Adsper2000 Great question. When people flee, they slowly assimilate into the local culture. Like many 4th generation XYZ-Americans like Italian-Americans and German-Americans do not speak Italian and German (Deutsch). Some cannot even point out Italy or Germany on a map. Imagine if you extend that to 20 generations. People who are forced to flee end up losing their culture and language down the line.
People who flee also share their culture with locals. Like tacos and burritos is popular in America. Black Ancient Egyptian styles can be found in other cultures like Yorubas in Nigeria.
However, people who stay in their land keep aspects of their cultures through generations. The facts that modern Egyptian do not understand anything about Ancient Egypt tells me all I need to know.
@@b1crusade384Yeah, those French people really identify with the Celtic druids. Same for the Iranians and the Achaemenid/Sassanid dynasties. Did you know that the Mauryan Empire, the first dynasty in history to ever unite India, was entirely forgotten about by Indians until the 19th century when it was rediscovered? Culture is not determined by ancestry. Turkish people only have like 25% Turkic DNA, but that doesn’t mean they identify with the Hittites or the Byzantines.
Reverse your logic. If the original Egyptians fled and lost their culture through generations of assimilating under the rule of other cultures, then it could also be that they never fled, and simply lost their culture through generations of assimilating under the rule of other cultures. Y’know, like almost every single other people the Romans, Greeks, Arabs occupied but didn’t replace.
And look at a map. No Egyptian is running across the continent through the Sahara, Sahel, and rainforests to reach Nigeria. Camels weren’t even introduced into Africa at that point in time. They would just settle in Ethiopia, like the Ethiopian Jews did.
@@Adsper2000 go take your cognitive dissonance logic nonsense to other people who also are in denial and intentionally blind to facts.
Egypt is famous for its Past but what's Egypt famous for now?? Nothing.
The Suez Canal, I would think.
Couple years ago it dominated world headlines.
So?