demotic

Demotic is an adjective with several related meanings. It derives from Greek demos, meaning "the people," and in general usage describes what belongs to or is characteristic of ordinary people or the common language of a society. In Egyptology, demotic designates both a stage of the ancient Egyptian language and the script used to write it during the later periods of ancient Egypt and into Roman times. The Demotic language represents the late phase of Egyptian, evolving from earlier forms during the first millennium BCE, and it was used for everyday administration, literature, and correspondence.

The Demotic script emerged from the northern forms of hieratic around the 7th century BCE. It is a cursive, highly abbreviated writing system, combining phonetic signs with logograms. It was the primary script for daily life in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt and remained in use for about a thousand years, until gradually superseded by Coptic in the 4th–5th centuries CE. Demotic texts appear on papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions, and they include literary works, legal documents, and religious material.

The decipherment of demotic, together with hieroglyphic and Greek on the Rosetta Stone, provided keys to the ancient Egyptian language. Today, demotic remains an essential field of Egyptology, helping scholars study administration, economy, and culture in later ancient Egypt. Outside Egyptology, the term demotic is used in linguistics and cultural studies to describe speech or culture that is popular, accessible, and intended for the broad public, as opposed to formal or literary forms.