Hieratic.—A kind of cursive hieroglyphic or hieratic writing is found even in the Ist Dynasty. In the Middle Kingdom it is well characterized, and in its most cursive form seems hardly to retain any definable trace of the original hieroglyphic pictures. The style varies much at different periods.
| Sign. | Description. | Name. | Word-sign Value. | Phonetic Value. | Determinative Value. |
| child | hrd (khrod) | youth | |||
| face | ḥr (ḥor) | ḥr | [ḥr] | ||
| eye | ir.t (yori.t) | ir | ir | see, &c. | |
| mouth | r (ro) | r | r | ||
| forearm | ’ (’ei) | ’ | ’ | [action of hand or arm] | |
| arm with stick | nḫt “be strong” | nḫt | violent action | ||
| man with stick | nḫt “be strong” | nḫt | violent action | ||
| lungs and windpipe | sm; | sm; | |||
| heart | ib | heart | |||
| heart and windpipe | ? | nfr | |||
| sparrow | ? | šr | evil, worthlessness, smallness | ||
| widgeon | s;.t | s; | s; | ||
| bolti-fish | in.t | in | in | ||
| tusk | (1) ibḥ “tooth” (2) ḥw “taste” | bḥ ḥw | bḥ | bite, &c. | |
| cut branch | ḫt | ḫt | [ḫt] | wood, tree | |
| threshing-floor | sp.t | sp | |||
| sun | (1) r’ “sun” (2) hrw “day” | (1) sun (2) division of time | |||
| chamber, house | pr | pr | |||
| flat land | t’ | t’ | t’ | boundless horizon, eternity | |
| libation vase | ḥs.t | ḥs | ḥs | ||
| cord on stick | wz | wz | wz | ||
| basket | nb.t | nb | |||
| looped basket | ? | k | k | ||
| sickle | ? | m’ | m’ | ||
| composite hoe | [mr?] | mr | mr | tillage | |
| fire-drill | z’.t(?) | z’ | z’ | ||
| attendant’s equipment | šmś “follow” | šmś | |||
| knife | dś | dś | cut, prick, cutting instrument |
Demotic.—Widely varying degrees of cursiveness are at all periods observable in hieratic; but, about the XXVIth Dynasty, which inaugurated a great commercial era, there was something like a definite parting between the uncial hieratic and the most cursive form afterwards known as demotic. The employment of hieratic was thenceforth almost confined to the copying of religious and other traditional texts on papyrus, while demotic was used not only for all business but also for writing literary and even religious texts in the popular language. By the time of the XXVth Dynasty the cursive of the conservative Thebais had become very obscure. A better form from Lower Egypt drove this out completely in the time of Amasis II. and is the true demotic. Before the Macedonian conquest the cursive ligatures of the old demotic gave birth to new symbols which were carefully and distinctly formed, and a little later an epigraphic variety was engraved on stone, as in the case of the Rosetta stone itself. One of the most characteristic distinctions of later demotic is the minuteness of the writing.
HRGic is normally written from right to left, the signs facing to the commencement of the line; hieratic and demotic follow the same direction. But monumental hieroglyphic may also be written from left to right, and is constantly so arranged for purposes of symmetry, e.g. the inscriptions on the two jambs of a door are frequently turned in opposite directions; the same is frequently done with the short inscriptions scattered over a scene amongst the figures, in order to distinguish one label from another.
In modern founts of type, the hieroglyphic signs are made to run from left to right, in order to facilitate the setting where European text is mixed with the Egyptian. The table on next page shows them in their more correct position, in order to display more clearly their relation to the hieratic and demotic equivalents.
Clement of Alexandria states that in the Egyptian schools the pupils were first taught the “epistolographic” style of writing (i.e. demotic), secondly the “hieratic” employed by the sacred scribes, and finally the “hieroglyphic” (Strom. v. 657). It is doubtful whether they classified the signs of the huge hieroglyphic syllabary with any strictness. The only native work on the writing that has come to light as yet is a fragmentary papyrus of Roman date which has a table in parallel columns of hieroglyphic signs, with their hieratic equivalents and words written in hieratic describing them or giving their values or meanings. The list appears to have comprised about 460 signs, including most of those that occur commonly in hieratic. They are to some extent classified. The bee
heads the list as a royal sign, and is followed by figures of nobles and other human figures in various attitudes, more or less grouped among themselves, animals, reptiles and fishes, scorpion, animals again, twenty-four alphabetic characters, parts of the human body carefully arranged from
to