Surely the distinction between Greek and surrounding civilisations is that the former was philsophic and the latter mythic. (see essay here :

[www.friesian.com]

- seafaring, trading, money, and a flexible alphabet employed as much to write comedies and love letters as religious formulae.

There remain examples of borrowing from Egypt, for example the proportions and attitudes of early Kourioi, and the probable adoption of Egyptian demotic numerals to form the basis of the Greek alphabetic numerical system.

And where did the Egyptians 'borrow from'? Sumerians?

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