| Hieratic | |
|---|---|
 Transcribed papyrus, c. 1500 BCE | |
| Script type | with consonants |
Period | c. 3200 BCE – 3rd century CE |
| Direction | Mixed |
| Languages | Egyptian language |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Egyptian hieroglyphs
|
Child systems | Demotic possibly inspiredByblos syllabary |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Egyh(060), Egyptian hieratic |
| Unicode | |
| U+13000–U+1342F(unified withEgyptian hieroglyphs) | |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
Hieratic (/haɪəˈrætɪk/;Ancient Greek:ἱερατικά,romanized: hieratiká,lit. 'priestly') is the name given to acursive writing system used forAncient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise ofDemotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush onpapyrus.[1]
Hieratic should not be confused withcursive hieroglyphs. The two were indistinct during theOld Kingdom but separated into different writing systems during theFirst Intermediate Period.[2][3]
In the second century, the termhieratic was used for the first time by the Greek scholarClement of Alexandria to describe this Ancient Egyptian writing system.[4] The term derives from the Greek for 'priestly writing' (Koine Greek:γράμματα ἱερατικά) because at that time, for more than eight and a half centuries, hieratic had been used traditionally only for religious texts and literature.
Hieratic can also be anadjective meaning 'of or associated with sacred persons or offices;sacerdotal'.[5]
Hieratic developed as a cursive form ofhieroglyphic script in theNaqada III period of Ancient Egypt, roughly 3200–3000 BCE.[6] Althoughhandwritten printed hieroglyphs continued to be used in some formal situations, such as manuscripts of theEgyptian Book of the Dead, noncursive hieroglyphic script became largely restricted to monumental inscriptions.
Around 650 BCE, the more cursiveDemotic script developed from hieratic.[1] Demotic arose in northern Egypt and replaced hieratic and the southern shorthand known as abnormal hieratic for most mundane writing, such as personal letters and mercantile documents. Hieratic continued to be used by the priestly class for religious texts and literature into the third century CE.
Through most of its long history, hieratic was used for writing administrative documents, accounts, legal texts, and letters, as well as mathematical, medical, literary, and religious texts. During the Greco-Roman period, when Demotic, and later,Greek, had become the chief administrative script, hieratic was limited primarily to religious texts. In general, hieratic was much more important than hieroglyphs throughout Egypt's history, being the script used in daily life. It was also the writing system first taught to students, knowledge of hieroglyphs being limited to a small minority who were given additional training.[7] It is often possible to detect errors in hieroglyphic texts that came about due to a misunderstanding of an original hieratic text.
Most often, hieratic script was written inink with areedbrush onpapyrus, wood, stone, or potteryostraca. During the Roman period, reedpens (calami) were also used. Thousands of limestone ostraca have been found at the site ofDeir al-Madinah, revealing an intimate picture of the lives of common Egyptian workers. Besides papyrus, stone, ceramic shards, and wood, there are hieratic texts on leather rolls, although few have survived. There are also hieratic texts written on cloth, especially on linen used inmummification. There are some hieratic texts inscribed on stone, a variety known as lapidary hieratic. These are particularly common onstelae from thetwenty-second dynasty.
During the latesixth dynasty, hieratic was sometimes incised into mud tablets with astylus, similar tocuneiform. About five hundred of these tablets have been discovered in the governor's palace at Ayn Asil (Balat),[8] and a single example was discovered from the site of Ayn al-Gazzarin, both in theDakhla Oasis.[9][10][11] At the time the tablets were made, Dakhla was located far from centers ofpapyrus production.[12] These tablets record inventories, name lists, accounts, and approximately fifty letters. Of the letters, many are internal letters that were circulated within the palace and the local settlement, but others were sent from other villages in the oasis to the governor.
Hieratic script, unlike inscriptional andmanuscript hieroglyphs, reads from right to left. Initially, hieratic could be written in either columns or horizontal lines, but after thetwelfth dynasty (specifically during the reign ofAmenemhat III), horizontal writing became the standard.
Hieratic is noted for its cursive nature and use ofligatures for a number of characters. Hieratic script also uses a much more standardizedorthography than hieroglyphs; texts written in the latter often had to take into account extra-textual concerns, such as decorative uses and religious concerns that were not present in, say, a tax receipt. There are also some signs that are unique to hieratic, althoughEgyptologists have invented equivalent hieroglyphic forms for hieroglyphic transcriptions and typesetting.[3] Several hieratic characters have diacritical additions so that similar signs could easily be distinguished.
Hieratic is often present in any given period in two forms, a highly ligatured, cursive script used for administrative documents, and a broaduncialbookhand used for literary, scientific, and religious texts. These two forms can often be significantly different from one another. Letters, in particular, used very cursive forms for quick writing, often with large numbers of abbreviations for formulaic phrases, similar toshorthand.
A highly cursive form of hieratic known as "Abnormal Hieratic" was used in theTheban area from the second half of thetwentieth dynasty until the beginning of thetwenty-sixth dynasty.[13][14] It derives from the script of Upper Egyptian administrative documents and was used primarily for legal texts, land leases, letters, and other texts. This type of writing was superseded by Demotic—a Lower Egyptian scribal tradition—during the twenty-sixth dynasty, when Demotic was established as a standard administrative script throughout a re-unified Egypt.
Hieratic has had influence on a number of other writing systems. The most obvious is that onDemotic, its direct descendant. Related to this are the Demotic signs of theMeroitic script and the borrowed Demotic characters used in theCoptic alphabet andOld Nubian.
Outside of the Nile Valley, many of the signs used in theByblos syllabary apparently were borrowed fromOld Kingdom hieratic signs.[15] It is also known that earlyHebrew usedhieratic numerals.[16][17]
The Unicode standard considers hieratic characters to be font variants of theEgyptian hieroglyphs, and the two scripts have been unified.[18] Hieroglyphs were added to theUnicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2.
With regards the possibility of including a dedicated hieratic font, theUnicode Standard, Version 5.2 states:
"In the years sinceChampollion published hisdecipherment of Egyptian in 1824,Egyptologists have shown little interest intypesetting hieratic text. Consequently, there is no tradition of hieratic fonts in either lead or digital formats. Because hieratic is a cursive form of the underlyinghieroglyphic characters, hieratic text is normally rendered using the more easily legible hieroglyphs. In principle a hieratic font could be devised for specialist applications, but as for fonts for other cursive writing systems, it would require very largeligature tables—even larger than usual, because of the great many hieroglyphic signs involved."
Some work towards developing a dedicated hieratic font was made by Gosline (2002) and theHieratic Font Project.[19] Currently Egyptologists must first transcribe hieratic into hieroglyphs before typesetting and translating.[3][20]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
