Except that there are 37 new states and a lot more cosmopolitanism.
Ancient Chinese characters did not look like modern ones at all.
Check the Aramaic alphabet, the one that was used in Mesopotamia from 800 BC. It's almost the same as modern Hebrew, and close to Arabic too. If you can read Hebrew, you can read ancient Aramaic. If you can read modern Chinese, you can't read ancient Chinese. As simple as that.
The mother of all European and Middle Eastern alphabets is Phoenician. It is as old as Chinese characters, but has evolved less in time. The closest modern equivalent is the Greek alphabet. Many letters are identical, apart from some left-right inversions.
The Romans didn't wipe out Egyptian culture or people. Ancient Egyptian language was officially extinct by 600 BC, when Demotic Egyptian replaced it. They continued to speak Demotic Egyptian and write with Hieroglyphs throughout Greek and Roman rule. Egyptians adopted Greek script around 400 AD, then the Arabic script.
Egyptian culture was completely preserved under the Romans, and influenced Roman culture more than the other way round. The cult of Isis became very popular in Italy, Greece and Mesopotamia during Roman rule. It is said that the cult of Isis was replaced by the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary when Roman citizens became Christians. So much for the Egyptians being wiped out.
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