Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [87]
But invasions ultimately did undo the Egyptian language in its homeland: after all, Egypt is today a predominantly Muslim country with a Christian minority, everyone speaking Arabic. How did Egyptian finally come to lose its grip on its speakers?
First of all, there must have been a progressive weakening and dilution of the Egyptian-speaking part of the population. It gradually became a highly multilingual society. Egypt, after all, underwent many invasions in its last five hundred years of independent existence, at the hands of Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. In the Hellenistic period (332-30 BC) there was also a major influx of Jews, whose major lingua franca was Greek. None of these brought a language that was to achieve full vernacular status in Egypt. But as we have seen, the Aramaic associated with the Assyrians and the Persians did spread within Egyptian society beyond the official sphere, and each of these succeeding powers brought in and fostered new communities that would have spoken something other than Egyptian.
Nevertheless, when Arabs in the first flush of Islam took possession of the country in the mid-seventh century AD, Egyptian was still the principal language spoken in its streets and fields.
The Arabs were not the first force of nomads to penetrate Egypt: the Libyans, and perhaps the Hyksos, had achieved this long before in the second millennium, and there may have been many other smaller incursions over the three poorly documented Intermediate Periods of Egyptian history. The Arabs were not the first power to use a foreign language for purposes of government: all of the Persians, Greeks and Romans had done this. The Arabs were not the first substantial power with a centre abroad to take possession of Egypt, and rule it as a colony: this had been done before for two centuries by the Persians, and for seven centuries by the Romans. The Arabs were not even the first to introduce a new religion: this had been successfully attempted by the Christians in the Roman period.
Why, then, was Arabic the first language successfully to replace Egyptian in its home country? The answer must lie in the combination of all these circumstances. Egyptian’s strengths were subverted one by one.
First the Assyrian and Babylonian wars in Palestine created a large Aramaic-speaking émigré community in the Delta area. This would have been the end of Egyptian’s language monopoly in the country, not very significant in itself. But then the country was penetrated by numerous business-minded Greeks, brought in by the Saite dynasty to buttress an alliance against Near Eastern powers, and granted their own, Greek-speaking, entrepôt in Naucratis in the Delta. Egypt was now very much a multilingual society, with foreigners’ languages more and more associated with higher prestige. The Persian conquest, and a succession of foreign rulers from Persia and then (after Alexander) Greece, meant that now higher-level administration began to be conducted in a language foreign to Egypt: in Aramaic for two hundred years, and then in Greek for a millennium.*
Linguistically, not much would have changed when the Romans unseated the Greeks in 30 BC, other than a small influx of Latin speakers, principally soldiers. But this change of government was to prove the profoundest turning point for the fate of the language: Egypt was no longer to be governed by its own kings in its own interest, but by provincial governors as a useful bread basket for Rome, and (increasingly) a destination for rich tourists.
What all the invasions had in common was the fact that they were not nomadic movements: they were military affairs conducted by well-organised armies in pursuit of commanders’ global political aims. The point in controlling Egypt was to be associated with its ancient glory, and to appropriate its present agricultural wealth. Otherwise, Egypt was to be kept true to its traditions, and so the only population movements were movements of elites, and small groups such as the Jews. Egyptian civilisation had, however, become