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For how long was Greek considered the language of Egyptian royalty?
Question
#51260. Asked by robboy. (Sep 26 04 8:24 PM)
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Brainyblonde
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Coptic refers to the last stage of the Egyptian language, which was written with the Coptic alphabet. It is based on the Greek alphabet, but contains some extra letters for sounds used in Coptic but not in Greek. The language survived the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century but gradually lost ground against Arabic, which had become the official language for state affairs in the early 8th century. It persisted as a spoken and liturgical language of Christian Egyptians (Copts) until the thirteenth century. From then on, it was steadily pushed back into Upper Egypt, and finally became extinct in the 17th century, though it is possible that the Coptic language survived in isolated pockets until the beginning of the 19th century.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_language
This site has the evolution of language and the ancient Egyptians.
http://www.ancient-egypt.org/language/grammar/0102_evolution.html
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robboy
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I appreciate that info, Bb, but it's not exactly what I'm wanting to find out. The Rosetta Stone has been determined to have been created around 200 BC, and I understand that in addition to hieroglyphs and Coptic, Greek was used because it was the language of the royalty. Your site gives info only on Coptic and well into the AD period.
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robboy
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It is some more helpful, but I already know that the Coptic language was being used and that it had derivations in the Greek; that's obvious by virtue of it being on the Rosetta Stone. But at some point it was determined that Greek was the language of the Royals of Egypt, courtesy of Alexander, and continued to be, even as Coptic was being evolved and eventually was, I gather, assimilated into the Coptic. My question may be too vague to answer accurately, and I can probably assume Greek was discontinued when royalty was discontinued.
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