Same goes for Japanese or Arabic (and their respective scripts). Let’s put this into context: if you, an English speaker, would learn Chinese, you’d also learn the Chinese script. Never did they use Egyptian hieroglyphs for that, either. After the new Kingdom we also get Egyptian scribes writing in Greek. Some of these cuneiform clay tablets even had annotations in Egyptian language, using Egyptian hieratic: Egyptian scribes commenting on foreign correspondence for other Egyptian scribes also Egyptian scribes correcting translations done by other Egyptian scribes.
Never would they use any Egyptian scripts. The peace treaty between Ramses II and the Hittites also exists in a Hittite version, and it is highly unlikely, if not downright impossible, that no Egyptian would have checked that version before it was “signed”.Īll of these documents use the cuneiform script. These documents are usually documents of international trade, politics, and so on. In New Kingdom times, they wrote in Akkadian, a Semitic language from Mesopotamia which was used as an international language back in the Bronze Age. They’d be highly educated and learn foreign languages, much like highly educated people nowadays. We actually have documents written by New Kingdom scribes in other languages of their times. The hieroglyphic system, for the greatest part, only works within the frame of constraints of the Egyptian language, and within certain contexts, too: monumental writing in temples, tombs, art, etc.īut how can we know he wouldn’t even try to adapt his familiar script to the new language? How would Egyptians write in foreign languages, if not in their own script? What did they do back in the day?
Assuming he was writing about his experiences in the English language, it becomes even more unlikely that he would even consider using any Egyptian script whatsoever. Texts from daily life would be written in hieratic, not hieroglyphs. If he was writing in middle or Late Egyptian, he’d likely be using hieratic. Well, he probably wouldn’t write hieroglyphs in the first place.
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