especially in unstable regions, and especially so in Egypt. Though undoubtedly effective to check the civil authority of the cults, local village and town based practices seem to have been mostly unaffected by these edicts themselves. Rather, the erosion of native religion, and eventual destruction altogether, can be attributed to the priests, bishops, and monks who rampaged through the countryside, intent on "eradicating demons". A fiat of AD 423 prescribed penalties to Christians who disturbed the homes (including the shrines) of pagans who were "living quietly" and not breaking the law. Instead, it is more appropriate to trace the decline of native religion to the state of its infrastructure. Where Augustus and other emperors of the first and early second centuries AD built in Egypt, and their benevolence is attested to at temples throughout the country, the Crisis of the Third Century exhibits much less imperial activity in the region and religion. Temples during this era entered "a state of progressive ruin", falling into disrepair. This degeneration of pagan temples for the final time (as opposed to previously, when religious infrastructure would still be repaired or replaced by the pharaonic, Ptolemaic, or early Roman rulers) represents the main cause for the fragmentation of native Egyptian religion in its later forms. Long since missing the central authority given by a pharaoh or even an emperor as seen with Augustus and other first-century emperors who conserved religious infrastructure in the country, Egyptian religion became more and more localised. Religious leaders gradually lost their authority, a probable factor in the conversions to Christianity contemporaneously and later on. Still, at the end of the 5th century, the Neo-Platonist philosopher Heraescus, possibly the uncle and father-in-law of Horapollo, was buried according to pagan rites. Legacy One of the final bastions of Egyptian religion, the Coptic language survived the Christianisation and later Islamisation of the country and remained fundamentally similar to the language of Pharaonic Egypt (although more similar to Late Egyptian than any other stage, especially grammatically), enduring for over a millennium before its relegation to a liturgical language by the 16th century. Coptic would give later Egyptologists a crucial insight into the phonology of the Egyptian language, partly because it is not an abjad and thus records vowels, unlike hieroglyphics and hieratic. Perhaps the most influential and recognisable legacies of Egyptian religion are the monuments erected in honour of it throughout Egyptian history. Temples,