How did Cleopatra speak Arabic if the language didn’t exist until the common era?

faisal khan

The Arabic we know today did not exist in Cleopatra’s time.

The language of the Quran, Classical Arabic, came into its own seven centuries after she died.

The woman was a Ptolemy, a Greek — Her family ruled Egypt for three hundred years but refused to speak the local tongue.

Cleopatra was different.

She was the first of her line to learn Egyptian.

She spoke it to the common people, her court and her business were done in Koine Greek.

The historian Plutarch says she knew many languages to speak with foreign men — She learned Ethiopian, Hebrew, Parthian, and Median.

But she never spoke Arabic.

It would have been like a modern man trying to speak a language that had not yet been born.

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