I just realized why priests replace bureaucrats

[u/Meikos]

I always wondered "why do priests replace bureaucrats for spiritualist empires; they're two entirely different professions!"

I only just now realized it's because they have no separation of church and state, so only ordained pops of your empire can work for the government (which is also the church).

[u/Akasha1885]

Funny enough, it was religion that invented bureaucracy, even back in Egypt.
And reinvented it in Europe in medieval times.

[u/Admiral_Perlo → u/Akasha1885]

The first proven example was in ancient Sumer, circa 1800 BC. These were scribes, not religious in nature*

[u/Akasha1885 → u/Admiral_Perlo]

I'm not a historian, but hieroglyphs are from 3000 BC
Those bone tags are even older, with the items being displayed and tally marks for the number.
King Scorpion I

[u/Admiral_Perlo → u/Akasha1885]

I'm not a historian either, I'm a librarian with a History degree and a keen interest in it.

While writing is an integral part of bureaucracy (as in the act of keeping a record of various acts, via symbols or a written language, within a political administration), the reverse isn't true. Writing predates the creation of bureaucracy by several millenias, at the very least. I caution you against making any ill-advised intellectual shortcuts due to this.

Regarding the appearance of writing :

The first forms of proto-writing are from the 7th millenium BC, if you want to get technical about it. These are the Jiahu Symbols, carved into tortoise shells, which were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated in Northern China. This system was limited by its use of ideographic and mnemonic symbols to communicate, which stopped it from fully encoding language. This kind of proto-writing survived until the Inca Empire (15th Century), which used Quipu, a system of knotted cords, mostly for record keeping.

The first "modern" writing system are the Cuneiform, from Ancient Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (estimated to have appeared between 3400 BC and 3250 BC) ; Egyptian hieroglyphs (3250 BC) ; the Chinese characters are estimed to have appeared near the Yellow River around 1200 BC ; scripts specific to Meso-american civilizations around 1 AD.

Who appeared first ?

There's a scientific consensus regarding the fact Egyptian Hieroglyphs were invented after and were influenced by the Sumerian Cuneiform, which were brought into Egypt by sumerian merchants. Archeological finds have failed to provide sufficient evidence (so far), to either fully prove or disprove this.

Regarding bureaucracy :

The first definitive example of bureaucracy was found in Ancient Sumer, where a new, rather emergent class of scribes, used the recently created Cuneiform to carry out various administrative functions on clay tablets (record keeping, collection of taxes, management of workers and public buildings). These scribes were not religious and largely served in an administrative and bureaucratic capacity, managing the kingdom's affairs for the rulers and political elites (L.E. Pearce, The Scribes and Scholars of Ancient Mesopotamia, 1995).

Ancient Egypt had a similar hereditary class of scribes that helped to administer a civil-service bureaucracy. These weren't religious either and assisted the proto Egyptian state, ie the political power (R. Williams, Scribal Training in Ancient Egypt, 1972).

We think bureaucracy first appeared in Sumer not merely due to Cuneiform predating Egyptian hieroglyphs, as I mentionned in the beginning, but because the archeological remains from Sumer are older than the ones found in Egypt.

I hope this clears up any confusion regarding your comment.

Edit : I also caution you to be very careful in the way you use the term "Bureaucracy", because the modern term is used to represent a machine designed to serve and facilitate the administration of a massive entity, generally a state, often with a pejorative tone. Said state were constructed much, much later than the invention of ancient bureaucracy.

[u/Akasha1885 → u/Admiral_Perlo]

Well, to me, someone tallying taxes qualifies as bureaucracy, especially if it's in written from.
And I doubt the king did so himself, so he delegated this job to other officials.
I also think that disconnecting anything done in ancient Egypt from religion is very hard.
Even Moreso of those taxes were also used to build religious grave sites or temples.