The linguistic arrangement in Egypt remained essentially under the Romans as the Ptolemies had settled it. Apart from the military, among whom the Latin alone prevailed, the business-language for the intercourse of the upper posts was the Greek. Of the native language, which, radically different from the Semitic as from the Arian languages, is most nearly akin perhaps to that of the Berbers in North Africa, and of the native writing, the Roman rulers and their governors never made use; and, if already under the Ptolemies a Greek translation had to be appended to official documents written in Egyptian, at least the same held good for these their successors. Certainly the Egyptians were not prohibited from making use, so far as it seemed requisite according to ritual or otherwise appropriate, of the native language and of its time-hallowed written signs; in this old home, moreover, of the use of writing in ordinary intercourse the native language, alone familiar to the great public, and the usual writing must necessarily have been allowed not merely in the case of private contracts, but even as regards tax-receipts and similar documents. But this was a concession, and the ruling Hellenism strove to enlarge its domain. The effort to create for the views and traditions prevailing in the land an universally valid expression also in Greek gave an extension to the system of double names in Egypt such as we see nowhere else. All Egyptian gods whose names were not themselves current among the Greeks, like that of Isis, were equalised with corresponding or else not corresponding Greek ones; perhaps the half of the townships and a great number of persons bore as well a native as a Greek appellation. Gradually Hellenism in this case prevailed. The old sacred writing meets us on the preserved monuments last under the emperor Decius about the middle of the third, and its more current degenerated form last about the middle of the fifth century; both disappeared from common use considerably earlier. The neglect and the decay of the native elements of civilisation are expressed in these facts. The language of the land itself maintained its ground still for long afterwards in remote places and in the lower ranks, and only became quite extinct in the seventeenth century, after it--the language of the Copts--had, just like the Syriac, experienced in the later imperial period a limited regeneration in consequence of the introduction of Christianity and of the efforts directed to the production of a national-Christian literature. [Sidenote: Abolition of a resident court.]