Ancient Egypt, A Very Short Introduction
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loginIn the temple of the goddess Isis on the island of Philae, a few miles tothe south of the city of Aswan, one wall bears a brief hieroglyphicinscription. Its significance is not in its content or meaning but purelyits date – it was written on 24 August ad 394, and as far as we know itwas the last time that the hieroglyphic script was used. The language ofancient Egypt survived considerably longer (Philae temple also containsthe last graffiti in the more cursive ‘demotic’ script, dating to 2December ad 452), and in a sense it still exists in fossilized form in theliturgical texts of the modern Coptic church. Nevertheless, it wasaround the end of the 4th century ad that the knowledge and use ofhieroglyphs effectively vanished, and until the decipherment ofhieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, the written world ofthe Egyptians was unknown, and scholars were almost entirely relianton the accounts left by Greek and Roman authors, or the sections of theBible story in which Egypt features. Classical and biblical images ofEgypt therefore dominated the emerging subject of Egyptology untilalmost the end of the 19th century.
