How did the Egyptians forget Hieroglyphs? [10:53]

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
· Introduction
0:00 · Here, in the Temple of Isis at Philae, is the last hieroglyphic inscription ever written.
0:18 · It reads: Before Mandulis, son of Horus, by the hand of Nesmeterakhem,
0:25 · son of Nesmeter, Second Priest of Isis, for all time and eternity. Words spoken
0:32 · by Mandulis, lord of the Abaton, great god. The demotic panel beneath gives the date:
0:41 · the birthday of Osiris, his dedication feast, year 110 -- by our reckoning, August 24, AD 394.
· Introducing hieroglyphs
0:54 · Egyptian Hieroglyphs probably evolved in the 33rd century BC,
0:58 · two and a half millennia before the foundation of Rome. They survived until the final decades
1:05 · of the Western Roman Empire. Of the writing systems in use today, only Chinese characters
1:11 · approach the longevity of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Our own alphabet falls a thousand years short.
1:20 · Hieroglyphs were used primarily in religious and funerary contexts. They were meant to be
1:26 · monumental, eternal; each sign was a miniature work of art. By the time Egypt became a Roman
1:34 · province, the archaic form of the Egyptian language encoded in hieroglyphs was nearly
1:40 · two thousand years old. The script, however, was still evolving. Since the reign of the
1:47 · last native pharaoh, three centuries before, the number of signs had grown from about 750
1:54 · to several thousand. Signs were associated with more phonetic values than ever before, and used
2:01 · in increasingly elaborate ways. The culmination of these trends can be seen at Esna Temple,
2:07 · where one Roman-era hymn is written entirely in crocodile signs, and another with rams.
· Hieroglyphs in Roman Egypt
2:15 · Cornelius Gallus, the first Roman governor of Egypt, commemorated his suppression of a revolt
2:21 · with an inscription written in Latin, Greek, and hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic texts would be inscribed
2:28 · on obelisks commissioned by Domitian and Hadrian. During the reign of Trajan, there were no fewer
2:34 · than five professional hieroglyph-cutters working in the town of Oxyrhynchus.
2:40 · It was the temples, however, that contained the majority of Roman Egypt's hieroglyphic
2:45 · texts. These included hymns for the gods, descriptions of festival rituals,
2:51 · retellings of myths, and a wide range of other traditional forms.
2:56 · They could be quite lengthy: the modern publication of the Roman-era hieroglyphs in the
3:01 · Temple of Hathor at Dendera runs to nearly 2,000 pages; those of Esna Temple fill well over 1,000.
· The great temples
3:10 · Like the Ptolemaic kings before them, the Roman emperors were patrons of the temples, supporting
3:15 · major construction projects at Esna, Philae, and many other sanctuaries. They appeared in
3:22 · temple reliefs as pharaohs, performing the ancient rituals that ensured the preservation of Egypt.
3:30 · Popular devotion at the temples remained strong. Through the early imperial era,
3:35 · for example, the temples of Memphis sold vast numbers of animals to worshippers as offerings.
3:42 · The catacombs at Saqqara, across the river, are believed to contain
3:46 · more than four million mummified ibises and half a million mummified falcons.
· Decline of the temples
3:53 · Despite soaring falcon sales, the temples of Roman Egypt were a shadow of the economic
3:59 · powerhouses they had once been. During the reign of Ramesses III, the great Temple of
4:05 · Amun at Karnak had owned nearly 700,000 acres of fertile land, 421,000 cattle, and 65 towns,
4:15 · among much else. Although no temple of the Ptolemaic period could boast such resources,
4:21 · the kings had at least granted temples financial and administrative autonomy.
4:27 · The Romans, by contrast, systematically brought the temples under government control,
4:32 · confiscating most of their estates and forcing them to rely on state stipends.
4:38 · The social privileges of priests were also curtailed. All imperial support for the temples
4:44 · ended after the conversion of Constantine; Maximinus Daza, who reigned from 310 to 313,
4:52 · was the last emperor to have his name inscribed on a temple wall.
4:56 · We'll talk about the consequences of the temples' decline for hieroglyphs
5:00 · after a brief word about this video's sponsor.
5:04 · [ad text redacted]
6:26 · Returning to our topic. The temples declined rapidly
· Vanishing hieroglyphs
6:30 · over the course of the third and fourth centuries. Luxor Temple was converted
6:35 · into a legionary fort during the reign of Diocletian. Around the same time,
6:40 · a village -- complete with a church -- grew up inside the mortuary temple of Ramesses III.
6:46 · The decay of the temples dealt a fatal blow to hieroglyphs. Even in the pharaonic period,
6:52 · less than one percent of the population had been able to read and write them. This tiny
6:58 · minority had always been concentrated in the temples, where the script was
7:02 · taught. After Greek replaced Egyptian as the administrative language, only priests had any
7:08 · incentive to learn the ancient signs -- and now the priests were disappearing.
7:13 · Experts in hieroglyphs were already becoming difficult to find during the early imperial era.
7:19 · The hieroglyphs on a second-century obelisk now in the Florence Archaeological Museum, for example,
7:25 · are little more than a random assortment of signs. The so-called Bembine Tablet, probably made for
7:32 · a Temple of Isis in Rome, was decorated with symbols only distantly related to hieroglyphs.
7:39 · Not that any Roman could tell. Many Romans were intrigued by hieroglyphs:
· Roman ignorance of hieroglyphs
7:45 · an ostracon found at Medinet Madi seems to describe Hadrian questioning Egyptian
7:51 · priests about the meanings of signs. To judge from his work on Isis and Osiris,
7:57 · Plutarch was familiar with the meanings of at least a few hieroglyphs. Chaeremon of Alexandria,
8:03 · one of Nero's tutors, wrote a lost treatise on the topic. Someone with an elementary understanding
8:10 · of hieroglyphs made a Greek translation of the inscriptions on an obelisk in the Circus Maximus.
8:17 · Yet no Greek or Roman author known to us claimed the ability to read hieroglyphs. It was generally
8:24 · assumed that hieroglyphic signs were emblems of sacred wisdom, and had to be understood
8:30 · allegorically. There were Greek-speaking priests in Egypt who could have corrected this error,
8:36 · and Egyptian teaching manuals that could have been translated. But these opportunities were missed.
· Hieroglyphica
8:44 · The only Egyptian work on hieroglyphs that was translated into a classical language was
8:49 · written too late. Hieroglyphica, attributed to a priest named Horapollo, probably dates
8:56 · to the mid-fifth century. Although the author knew the meanings of some signs, he interpreted
9:02 · many others incorrectly, and seems to have had no idea how signs could be combined into sentences.
9:10 · By the time Horapollo wrote, there was probably no one in Egypt who knew much more about hieroglyphs.
9:17 · The only temples still officially in operation were at Philae, left open to appease the pagan
9:22 · tribes of the southern desert. Soon, these too would close. Sometime in late antiquity,
· Mysterious or powerless
9:29 · the image of the god next to the last hieroglyphic inscription at Philae
9:34 · was defaced. But the hieroglyphs themselves -- mysterious, or simply powerless -- were left alone.
9:43 · Don't leave me alone this October on my tour of Greece! We won't see hieroglyphs,
9:48 · but we will visit Athens, Sparta, and some of the most spectacular ruins in existence.
9:54 · Check out the link in the description to learn more. Speaking of more -- how about additional
10:00 · content from your favorite historical creator? Look no further than the toldinstone Patreon,
10:06 · also linked below. Feel free, finally, to check out my other channels,
10:12 · Toldinstone Footnotes and Scenic Routes to the Past. Thanks for watching.

They were culturally enriched by barbarians. That’s how.

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?
When did Egyptians stop being able to read hieroglyphs? And why? | 9:21
The Historian's Craft | 118K subscribers | 64,449 views | May 9, 2024
[Correction: "Hieroglyphs" is the actual term, not "Hieroglyphics", which is a collection of hieroglyphs. Did not catch that while doing the editing. Apologies everyone]

"This Is From Moses" Inscription Found in Sinai, Egypt, Sparks Debate [07/07/2025]

I don’t have time to watch the video. My bet would be Alexander the Great and the Greeks promoting the Greek language.

The rest of the hieroglyphs keyword, sorted:

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“It’s all Greek to me” Ptolemy

Ptolemy about it...

I think I know the answer to this:

(7:^/vv:%$@.:++_)_)_(+)8CoO-0lL<>>M>>

They never did them?

Plato they say could stick it away.

“They were culturally enriched by barbarians. That’s how.”

That is a GREAT comment, and sadly, almost guaranteed to be true.

The Ptolemies continued the use of hieroglyphics, iirc, though the rulers they supplanted might have considered the Macedonians to be barbarians.

There was an interesting podcast that talked about the last recorded use of hieroglyphic writing in the late Roman period. From the podcast, it seems like they just faded away as too cumbersome and being crowded out by more “modern” speech and writing.

Exactly! I assumed hieroglyphs were superseded by alphabetic writing.

Modern examples include when Turkiye changed its alphabet from Arabic to Roman, and kids today being unable to read script.

Couldn’t they have gotten some hints from the Rosetta Stone?

I don’t think people understand how much time is involved.

Cleopatra, for example, lived closer to today than the construction of the pyramids.

She was also Greek.

Language and writing drift. My kids are among the few of their generation who can write in cursive.

The Rosetta Stone, the Palermo Stone, and a bunch of other inscriptions existed, but it’s not terribly unlikely that most people weren’t literate in the first place, and those who were would read the Greek or Latin version. After they’d read the message, they didn’t need to read it again. Y’know, unless they were really OCD.

Too few people could read and write so it was easy to forget a written language. Cleopatra could read and write both Greek and Egyptian—a very bright woman. We even have her signature on a document, giving tax relief for some merchant. One of many things she signed, I am sure.

How did ancient Egyptians hold “spelling bees”?

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
	·	Introduction
0:00	·	Here, in the Temple of Isis at Philae, is the last hieroglyphic inscription ever written.
0:18	·	It reads: Before Mandulis, son of Horus, by the hand of Nesmeterakhem,
0:25	·	son of Nesmeter, Second Priest of Isis, for all time and eternity. Words spoken
0:32	·	by Mandulis, lord of the Abaton, great god. The demotic panel beneath gives the date:
0:41	·	the birthday of Osiris, his dedication feast, year 110 -- by our reckoning, August 24, AD 394.
	·	Introducing hieroglyphs
0:54	·	Egyptian Hieroglyphs probably evolved in the 33rd century BC,
0:58	·	two and a half millennia before the foundation of Rome. They survived until the final decades
1:05	·	of the Western Roman Empire. Of the writing systems in use today, only Chinese characters
1:11	·	approach the longevity of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Our own alphabet falls a thousand years short.
1:20	·	Hieroglyphs were used primarily in religious and funerary contexts. They were meant to be
1:26	·	monumental, eternal; each sign was a miniature work of art. By the time Egypt became a Roman
1:34	·	province, the archaic form of the Egyptian language encoded in hieroglyphs was nearly
1:40	·	two thousand years old. The script, however, was still evolving. Since the reign of the
1:47	·	last native pharaoh, three centuries before, the number of signs had grown from about 750
1:54	·	to several thousand. Signs were associated with more phonetic values than ever before, and used
2:01	·	in increasingly elaborate ways. The culmination of these trends can be seen at Esna Temple,
2:07	·	where one Roman-era hymn is written entirely in crocodile signs, and another with rams.
	·	Hieroglyphs in Roman Egypt
2:15	·	Cornelius Gallus, the first Roman governor of Egypt, commemorated his suppression of a revolt
2:21	·	with an inscription written in Latin, Greek, and hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphic texts would be inscribed
2:28	·	on obelisks commissioned by Domitian and Hadrian. During the reign of Trajan, there were no fewer
2:34	·	than five professional hieroglyph-cutters working in the town of Oxyrhynchus.
2:40	·	It was the temples, however, that contained the majority of Roman Egypt's hieroglyphic
2:45	·	texts. These included hymns for the gods, descriptions of festival rituals,
2:51	·	retellings of myths, and a wide range of other traditional forms.
2:56	·	They could be quite lengthy: the modern publication of the Roman-era hieroglyphs in the
3:01	·	Temple of Hathor at Dendera runs to nearly 2,000 pages; those of Esna Temple fill well over 1,000.
	·	The great temples
3:10	·	Like the Ptolemaic kings before them, the Roman emperors were patrons of the temples, supporting
3:15	·	major construction projects at Esna, Philae, and many other sanctuaries. They appeared in
3:22	·	temple reliefs as pharaohs, performing the ancient rituals that ensured the preservation of Egypt.
3:30	·	Popular devotion at the temples remained strong. Through the early imperial era,
3:35	·	for example, the temples of Memphis sold vast numbers of animals to worshippers as offerings.
3:42	·	The catacombs at Saqqara, across the river, are believed to contain
3:46	·	more than four million mummified ibises and half a million mummified falcons.
	·	Decline of the temples
3:53	·	Despite soaring falcon sales, the temples of Roman Egypt were a shadow of the economic
3:59	·	powerhouses they had once been. During the reign of Ramesses III, the great Temple of
4:05	·	Amun at Karnak had owned nearly 700,000 acres of fertile land, 421,000 cattle, and 65 towns,
4:15	·	among much else. Although no temple of the Ptolemaic period could boast such resources,
4:21	·	the kings had at least granted temples financial and administrative autonomy.
4:27	·	The Romans, by contrast, systematically brought the temples under government control,
4:32	·	confiscating most of their estates and forcing them to rely on state stipends.
4:38	·	The social privileges of priests were also curtailed. All imperial support for the temples
4:44	·	ended after the conversion of Constantine; Maximinus Daza, who reigned from 310 to 313,
4:52	·	was the last emperor to have his name inscribed on a temple wall.
4:56	·	We'll talk about the consequences of the temples' decline for hieroglyphs
5:00	·	after a brief word about this video's sponsor.
5:04	·	[ad text redacted]
6:26	·	Returning to our topic. The temples declined rapidly
	·	Vanishing hieroglyphs
6:30	·	over the course of the third and fourth centuries. Luxor Temple was converted
6:35	·	into a legionary fort during the reign of Diocletian. Around the same time,
6:40	·	a village -- complete with a church -- grew up inside the mortuary temple of Ramesses III.
6:46	·	The decay of the temples dealt a fatal blow to hieroglyphs. Even in the pharaonic period,
6:52	·	less than one percent of the population had been able to read and write them. This tiny
6:58	·	minority had always been concentrated in the temples, where the script was
7:02	·	taught. After Greek replaced Egyptian as the administrative language, only priests had any
7:08	·	incentive to learn the ancient signs -- and now the priests were disappearing.
7:13	·	Experts in hieroglyphs were already becoming difficult to find during the early imperial era.
7:19	·	The hieroglyphs on a second-century obelisk now in the Florence Archaeological Museum, for example,
7:25	·	are little more than a random assortment of signs. The so-called Bembine Tablet, probably made for
7:32	·	a Temple of Isis in Rome, was decorated with symbols only distantly related to hieroglyphs.
7:39	·	Not that any Roman could tell. Many Romans were intrigued by hieroglyphs:
	·	Roman ignorance of hieroglyphs
7:45	·	an ostracon found at Medinet Madi seems to describe Hadrian questioning Egyptian
7:51	·	priests about the meanings of signs. To judge from his work on Isis and Osiris,
7:57	·	Plutarch was familiar with the meanings of at least a few hieroglyphs. Chaeremon of Alexandria,
8:03	·	one of Nero's tutors, wrote a lost treatise on the topic. Someone with an elementary understanding
8:10	·	of hieroglyphs made a Greek translation of the inscriptions on an obelisk in the Circus Maximus.
8:17	·	Yet no Greek or Roman author known to us claimed the ability to read hieroglyphs. It was generally
8:24	·	assumed that hieroglyphic signs were emblems of sacred wisdom, and had to be understood
8:30	·	allegorically. There were Greek-speaking priests in Egypt who could have corrected this error,
8:36	·	and Egyptian teaching manuals that could have been translated. But these opportunities were missed.
	·	Hieroglyphica
8:44	·	The only Egyptian work on hieroglyphs that was translated into a classical language was
8:49	·	written too late. Hieroglyphica, attributed to a priest named Horapollo, probably dates
8:56	·	to the mid-fifth century. Although the author knew the meanings of some signs, he interpreted
9:02	·	many others incorrectly, and seems to have had no idea how signs could be combined into sentences.
9:10	·	By the time Horapollo wrote, there was probably no one in Egypt who knew much more about hieroglyphs.
9:17	·	The only temples still officially in operation were at Philae, left open to appease the pagan
9:22	·	tribes of the southern desert. Soon, these too would close. Sometime in late antiquity,
	·	Mysterious or powerless
9:29	·	the image of the god next to the last hieroglyphic inscription at Philae
9:34	·	was defaced. But the hieroglyphs themselves -- mysterious, or simply powerless -- were left alone.
9:43	·	Don't leave me alone this October on my tour of Greece! We won't see hieroglyphs,
9:48	·	but we will visit Athens, Sparta, and some of the most spectacular ruins in existence.
9:54	·	Check out the link in the description to learn more. Speaking of more -- how about additional
10:00	·	content from your favorite historical creator? Look no further than the toldinstone Patreon,
10:06	·	also linked below. Feel free, finally, to check out my other channels,
10:12	·	Toldinstone Footnotes and Scenic Routes to the Past. Thanks for watching.