Hieratic

Development of hieratic script from hieroglyphs; after Champollion.

Hieratic (from the Greek meaning "sacred") is a cursive script of Egyptian hieroglyphs first used during the 1st Dynasty (c. 2925 BC - c. 2775 BC). Hieratic script was almost always written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus. After about 660 BC, the Demotic script (demotic is from the Greek meaning "of the people" or "popular") replaced hieratic in most secular writing, but hieratic continued to be used by priests for several more centuries.

The modern figurative use of 'hieratic' refers to the language of the highly educated elite in comparison with the language of the masses (see demotic).

A section of the Prisse papyrus from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, containing the Precepts of Kagemni and the Precepts of Ptahhotep in hieratic.

See also

*Coptic alphabet
*Coptic language
*Demotic
*Egyptian hieroglyph
*Egyptian languages
*Egyptian numerals
*Transliteration of ancient Egyptian

External links

*Basic Lessons in Hieratic

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