The decipherment, as you have seen, began with hieroglyphs carved in stone. But carving is slow. For everyday writing Egyptians used a quicker hand, written with a reed brush and ink. Greek writers later called it hieratic, "priestly", because in their day priests used it for religious books.
Key idea
Hieratic is the cursive form of the hieroglyphs: the same signs, with the same sound values and the same language, simplified and joined for fast writing in ink. It appears at the very beginning of Egyptian writing, in the late Predynastic (Naqada III) period, and was used alongside hieroglyphs for more than three thousand years.
Why it works
When you write quickly with a brush, you drop detail. An owl becomes a few strokes; a seated man becomes a hook. Signs that often stand together run into each other (ligatures). That is all hieratic is: hieroglyphs written fast. Because each hieratic sign still corresponds to a hieroglyph, a reader can convert one into the other, sign by sign.
| Hieroglyphic | Hieratic | |
|---|---|---|
| Written with | chisel or careful brush | reed brush and ink |
| On | stone walls, statues, coffins | papyrus, potsherds and flakes of limestone (ostraca), wooden boards, leather, linen |
| Direction | right to left, left to right, or in columns | right to left; in columns at first, in horizontal lines as the rule after the 12th Dynasty |
| Look | detailed pictures | simplified signs, often joined |
| Used | about 3200 BC to AD 394 | about 3200 BC to the 3rd century AD |
Worked example: Which came first?
A student writes: "Hieroglyphs came first; hieratic was invented later as a shortcut." What does the evidence say?
- Ink inscriptions in a cursive hand appear on pottery and labels from the very start of writing, at the end of the Predynastic Period.
- Carved hieroglyphs and written hieratic developed side by side, each suited to its material.
- So hieratic is not a later invention; it is the brush form of the same script from the start.
Answer: They were used side by side from the beginning.
Worked example: One script, two looks
Why can an Egyptologist who knows hieroglyphs learn to read hieratic, but not instantly?
- The signs, values and language are the same, so everything known about reading hieroglyphs still applies.
- But the shapes are simplified, joined and different from scribe to scribe and century to century.
- A reader must learn the hieratic form of each sign, usually from a table of sign forms by date (a palaeography).
Answer: Same system; new shapes to learn.
Common mistake
Thinking hieratic came after hieroglyphs. The two were used side by side from the beginning. What came later, in the 7th century BC, was Demotic, which grew out of hieratic.
A later, very cursive form used at Thebes for legal documents and letters, called abnormal hieratic, was replaced by Demotic in the 26th Dynasty.