比如: Hieroglyphics is a system of writing that was used by the ancient Egyptians for more than 3,000 years, until the A.D. 300s. The glory of the ancient Egyptian empire faded as a series of conquerors&----the Persians, the Macedonians, and the Romans----invaded Egypt, and installed their leaders as non-Egyptian kings of Egypt. In the year 384 A.D., the Roman Emperor Theodosus issued a decree abolishing rites in the temples of Egypt, and this effectively put an end to the reading and writing of hieroglyphics. For the next 1,400 years, hieroglyphics remained on the monuments of ancient Egypt, but the ability to decode them was lost.
It can be inferred from the passage that it would have been difficult to find someone who could read Egyptian hieroglyphics 1,in 1400 BC 2,in 300 AD 3,in 1400 AD 4,in 1900 AD |