I read that as “problematic Greek queen” 😅 I guess, same question, but for Greek?
Comment on How Come Latin Didn't Spread in the Middle East as Much as it did in Europe?
phr@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
the roman administration in the east relied on greek, which was well established as an administrative language by alexander and his successors. cleopatra e.g. was a ptolemaic, greek queen.
AccoSpoot1@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Exactly this. Most Egyptians could speak Greek by the time Romans ruled Egypt and continued to learn and speak Greek until Arab conquest when Greek eventually became irrelevant
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
*Most Egyptian elites? I'm not well-informed on this, but I find it hard to believe that your average Egyptian peasant could speak Greek.
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
There an Arab historian called Maqrizi who lived in the 15th century. He wrote about south Egyptians monasteries saying: "… and most Christians of these monasteries the knowladge of Southern Coptic dialect [ Egyptian language ] followed by Northern Coptic dialect and Christian women of the south and their children almost speak nothing but southern Egyptian and have complete knowledge of Roman language (he means Greek since Romans in Egypt spoke Greek).
In addition to that many christian prayers are almost entirely in Greek. Its possible that really simple people like farmers may have not spoken Greek but most Egyptians had to understand it since it was the legal language of the country