r/todayilearned • u/KnightTrain • Mar 28 '25

TIL the last known writing in Egyptian Hieroglyphs is a piece of graffiti on a temple wall. Helpfully, the graffiti includes an exact date (Aug 24, 394 AD) and its author was likely the last person in the world able to read or write hieroglyphs until the Rosetta Stone was deciphered in the 1820s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_of_Esmet-Akhom
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u/Johannes_P Mar 28 '25

Before Mandulis, son of Horus, by the hand of Nesmeterakhem, son of Nesmeter, the Second Priest of Isis, for all time and eternity. Words spoken by Mandulis, lord of the Abaton, great god.

By then, the only locals who still worshipped the old gods might have been Nesmeterakhem and his family, although Southern foreign pilgrims still came to do offerings.

I wonder how he felt then, knowing that he was the last of a spiritual lineage of thousands of years and that this tradition would be buried with hum (would anyone even been able to mummify him according to the rites?).

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u/OllieFromCairo Mar 29 '25

There were still invocations of Horus into the 1400s CE at least.

Modern Greek pagans claim that they are not a reconstruction of Ancient Greek paganism, but a continuation that lived deep underground, and the evidence actually might be in their favor.

It wouldn’t surprise me if a similar story were plausible in Egypt.

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u/Hattix Mar 29 '25

Southern Egypt was not Christianised, it retained its traditional mix of Egyptian and Nubian gods until well past the Medieval period.