Quote:
Originally Posted by BetterRed
I've have the paperback edition of this book (as yet unread). Skimming though it there are lots of libretti fragments in Italian, some in French and German perhaps, but I can't see any Arabic, not even Hebrew from Nabucco. Maybe the e-book edition quotes Aida in Arabic for the sake of 'authenticity', despite the fact that Ancient Egyptians never spoke Arabic - they used various Coptic dialects and latterly Greek!
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My inner pedant forces me to point out that "Aida" is actually set during the Egyptian Old Kingdom (approx 2700 - 2200BC), when the language was what Egyptologists refer to as "Old Egyptian" (which was succeeded in turn by "Middle Egyptian" and "Late Egyptian"). Coptic - the final form of the Egyptian spoken and written language - didn't come into being until the 1st century AD.
But the fundamental point - that Arabic is not involved in any way, shape or form - is of course absolutely true
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