Was Egypt able to keep their culture for so long, and build many structures and temples - simply because they could transmit ideas through time? Other cultures would be stuck relearning the same building techniques and religious ceremonies every generation and relying on faulty oral histories.
From what I understand ancient civilizations rarely kept records of things that could be easily transmitted by speech. It seems to me that most practical skills are better taught this way anyway.
They didn’t have manuals and grimoires of building techniques, flora and fauna. Most of the texts were either religious or for bookkeeping. This was true of Egypt as well. Almost everything on display today is about death rites.
Of course it might be that these records were just fewer and eventually lost.
Probably not, at least not significantly. AFAIK most people couldn't read, it was mainly the clergy and nobility as in most ancient civilizations.
Egyptian culture persisted because Egypt persisted. The Nile provided immense prosperity and sustained the country for millenia. Once we get to modern antiquity, they had a massive trade operation with Rome which sustained them for a thousand years.
Culture can persist and be transmitted without written record. Most cultures operated this way, at least initially.
Remember that universal literacy did not exist until just a few hundred years ago. Most people throughout history were not taught to read. Their stories were recorded by the clergy in writing for posterity, but on a day to day basis, they were passed down by word of mouth.
I might be wrong about this one but AFAIK the heiroglyph script we associate with Egypt was a lost language for a long time. It was a ceremonial language known only by the priests and it was forgotten after the last dynasty. Until the Rosetta stone was discovered, all of that writing was effectively lost, unreadable until modern times.
You've never played the "telephone game" in school? Passing information verbally from one person to another (whether standing next to you or to the next generation) is famously inaccurate, even when everyone is trying to ensure correctness.
Papyrus as a communication method through time.