Egypt: The Success of Stability
The story of Egyptian is very similar to that of Chinese, with it being another prime example of the Farmer's Strategy, focusing on slow growth of population and influence rather than conquest and expansion. Egyptian developed around the Nile river, with almost all of its native population being found in this region, and despite holding the Nile for thousands of years with nearly universal use, it never managed to spread very far from it. It (like Chinese) had three long periods of unity, interspersed with times of civil unrest and alien occupation, with Egypt's being the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt. Egyptian united early along the entire Nile river valley, and its extent remained the same for almost 4000 years, with the first recorded Egyptian sentence being dated to around 2690 BC. Over this time, vernacular language changed, however written language appears to have remained largely unaffected. It is found that despite large amounts of Libyans, which spoke an old relative of the Berber language, and Kushites migrating to Egypt, there was no meaningful impact on the Egyptian language. This is even despite both groups having controlled Egypt for different periods of time under ruling dynasties. The Egyptians did eventually conquer Palestine and Syria in thirteenth century, BC, however despite this all correspondence between the Pharaoh and his foreign vassals was in Akkadian, not Egyptian, which shows how the people of these areas were largely left to keep their own customs as long as they paid homage to the Pharaoh. This rule over the Nile would be almost entirely universal until Egypt met their match in the form of Alexander the Great and his Macedonian successors.
Alexander, along with his Ptolemaic successors, managed to rid Egyptian from the high strata of society in Egypt, using Greek for nobility and Aramaic for administration, leaving Egyptian to the commoners. This system would remain until the arrival of the Romans, as there was little success in introducing Greek into lower class society until the arrival of Christianity under the Romans, which led to the eventual suppression of hieroglyphics after 3500 years of use. This led to the eventual end of mainstream Egyptian, as the other forms of Egyptian writing, such as the more common but less formal demotic, died out soon after as well. Despite this, Christianity also led to the survival of Egyptian, as Egyptian adopted the Greek alphabet and added 6 new letters from demotic to form the Coptic alphabet in an effort to adapt Egyptian to a more similar writing system, creating the Coptic variant of the language. Egypt finally fell after it was bombarded so many times that it slowly became diluted and bilingual as so many outsiders moved in, and finally it could not resist the invasion of Arabic, brought on the backs of Islamic conquerors. By being forced to accept Islam as their religion, they were also forced to adopt Arabic, which slowly spread as Islam spread. With the loss of both their religion and then their language, the independent Egyptian identity faded, as they became more and more as simply Arab Muslims.
Egyptian survived for thousands of years for several reasons. It was united as a single culture under a single ruler and empire very early on in the form of the Egyptian Menes. It used culture and religion to reinforce loyalty in the concept of a single ruler, meaning that there would be a reason to unite under this ruler, through the form of the Egyptian Pharaoh. This strong unity meant that the language was able to remain powerful in its home region, as it was able to standardize under a single rule easily, preventing the early formation of dialects, and this unification meant Egyptian had a better chance at fending off invaders early on. Its final and strongest reason for survival was simply its massive population size, as being centered around the fertile Nile meant that Egyptian was spoken by so many people that it was immune from being overrun by foreigners as they could simply out populate the enemy, as it would be difficult to convert the language of so many people. This meant that even when conquered, Egyptian could still survive.
Even with this strong power base, Egypt never spread much farther, mostly due to their isolationist foreign policy. Egypt mostly interacted through trade, but this was done through intermediaries, be it the Phoenicians or the Greeks later on. They conquered areas such as Syria and Palestine, but they never attempted to spread their culture here to create permanent ties. They may have been more active pushing south into areas such as Kush, due to the similarity in some ancient languages to Egyptian in the region as well as some records, but the extent of this is unknown and probably not large.
One interesting note about Egyptian is that nobody knows how Egyptian hieroglyphs were developed, and while the common theory is that they developed from cuneiform, it has not been proven. The reason this is so fascinating is that when Egyptian hieroglyphs first appear, they do not undergo the usual evolution of other writing systems. Rather, it remains pretty much the same for 3500 years, adding minor changes and some new words over time, but remaining pretty consistent until Christianity brought with it Greek alphabets and changed Egyptian writing and administration. This proves that Egyptian hieroglyphs were very effective and sufficient for Egypt, as they saw no need or desire to change their system until forced to as new administrations introduced their own government and language, from the Romans and Persians to the Greeks. Part of the reason they could be forced in the first place was the belief among Egyptians that scribes were a higher caste, with whom all knowledge of writing should rest, meaning that it was easy to introduce other forms of writing to the lower strata who never knew their own way in the first place.
Despite surviving only through its liturgical use by the Coptic faith, the Egyptian language still stands as a pillar of the ancient world, due to its long history during which time it remained the major power in its region, despite foreign invasions and migrations. It took hundreds of years of foreign rule and three different cultures for Egyptian to finally be eradicated, which is a testament to how strong its initial base around the Nile truly was. Despite not surviving to the modern day as a spoken language, Egyptian still remains a testament to strength in numbers and the strength that comes from peaceful growth,
Alexander, along with his Ptolemaic successors, managed to rid Egyptian from the high strata of society in Egypt, using Greek for nobility and Aramaic for administration, leaving Egyptian to the commoners. This system would remain until the arrival of the Romans, as there was little success in introducing Greek into lower class society until the arrival of Christianity under the Romans, which led to the eventual suppression of hieroglyphics after 3500 years of use. This led to the eventual end of mainstream Egyptian, as the other forms of Egyptian writing, such as the more common but less formal demotic, died out soon after as well. Despite this, Christianity also led to the survival of Egyptian, as Egyptian adopted the Greek alphabet and added 6 new letters from demotic to form the Coptic alphabet in an effort to adapt Egyptian to a more similar writing system, creating the Coptic variant of the language. Egypt finally fell after it was bombarded so many times that it slowly became diluted and bilingual as so many outsiders moved in, and finally it could not resist the invasion of Arabic, brought on the backs of Islamic conquerors. By being forced to accept Islam as their religion, they were also forced to adopt Arabic, which slowly spread as Islam spread. With the loss of both their religion and then their language, the independent Egyptian identity faded, as they became more and more as simply Arab Muslims.
Egyptian survived for thousands of years for several reasons. It was united as a single culture under a single ruler and empire very early on in the form of the Egyptian Menes. It used culture and religion to reinforce loyalty in the concept of a single ruler, meaning that there would be a reason to unite under this ruler, through the form of the Egyptian Pharaoh. This strong unity meant that the language was able to remain powerful in its home region, as it was able to standardize under a single rule easily, preventing the early formation of dialects, and this unification meant Egyptian had a better chance at fending off invaders early on. Its final and strongest reason for survival was simply its massive population size, as being centered around the fertile Nile meant that Egyptian was spoken by so many people that it was immune from being overrun by foreigners as they could simply out populate the enemy, as it would be difficult to convert the language of so many people. This meant that even when conquered, Egyptian could still survive.
Even with this strong power base, Egypt never spread much farther, mostly due to their isolationist foreign policy. Egypt mostly interacted through trade, but this was done through intermediaries, be it the Phoenicians or the Greeks later on. They conquered areas such as Syria and Palestine, but they never attempted to spread their culture here to create permanent ties. They may have been more active pushing south into areas such as Kush, due to the similarity in some ancient languages to Egyptian in the region as well as some records, but the extent of this is unknown and probably not large.
One interesting note about Egyptian is that nobody knows how Egyptian hieroglyphs were developed, and while the common theory is that they developed from cuneiform, it has not been proven. The reason this is so fascinating is that when Egyptian hieroglyphs first appear, they do not undergo the usual evolution of other writing systems. Rather, it remains pretty much the same for 3500 years, adding minor changes and some new words over time, but remaining pretty consistent until Christianity brought with it Greek alphabets and changed Egyptian writing and administration. This proves that Egyptian hieroglyphs were very effective and sufficient for Egypt, as they saw no need or desire to change their system until forced to as new administrations introduced their own government and language, from the Romans and Persians to the Greeks. Part of the reason they could be forced in the first place was the belief among Egyptians that scribes were a higher caste, with whom all knowledge of writing should rest, meaning that it was easy to introduce other forms of writing to the lower strata who never knew their own way in the first place.
Despite surviving only through its liturgical use by the Coptic faith, the Egyptian language still stands as a pillar of the ancient world, due to its long history during which time it remained the major power in its region, despite foreign invasions and migrations. It took hundreds of years of foreign rule and three different cultures for Egyptian to finally be eradicated, which is a testament to how strong its initial base around the Nile truly was. Despite not surviving to the modern day as a spoken language, Egyptian still remains a testament to strength in numbers and the strength that comes from peaceful growth,