Changes

The impact was more than the disappearance of the old religions. Many traditions that were associated with worship began to diminish or cease all together. For instance, observations of the planets and stars became less relevant as the positioning of the starts and planets were not important in the worship of universal faiths. Old languages such as ancient Egyptian and Akkadian finally disappeared, which led to possible loss of knowledge these ancient languages possessed. Other changes though were more related to what universal religions achieved, which is a lessening of ethnic and cultural differences prevalent before and greater cohesion between multiple social groups. Social mobility in the religious orders now occurred across ethnic lines, allowing states and empires to depend on people with the same faith rather than same ruling ethnic groups. As ethnic groups shared the same god or religious ideas, then some of the ancient cultural groups disappeared. Gradually, cultural identity in places disappeared.  Common universal religions did create conflict in places where large non-universal groups persisted. For instance, Egypt still had a substantial polytheistic population until the Byzantine Emperor Justinian closed the temples in the 6th century CE.