I recently read that the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom is the last known use of Egyptian Hieroglyphs and that it was created around 391 AD. If this is true, then it means that the Romans had ruled Egypt for over 400 years. How is it possible that there were NO contemporary Latin writers who thought to transcribe or translate the language?
I think that in Egypt heiroglyphics had not been commonly used for centuries prior to the current era (C.E.). The Egyptians in Cleopatra's time could not read the heiroglyphs on the ancient monuments around them. The non-Greek written language of that time was "demotic" script. The information that was passed to Greeks like Heroditus, such as the ancient list of the Pharoes, was recorded in demotic script.