hieratic

Hieratic is a cursive writing system used in ancient Egypt, developed as a quicker means of writing that could be employed on papyrus, parchment, and ostraca. Derived from the formal hieroglyphic script, hieratic was primarily used by priests and scribes for religious texts, literary compositions, and everyday administrative documents, complementing the monumental hieroglyphs found in temples and tombs.

The script emerged in the early dynastic period and remained in widespread use through the New Kingdom and into late antiquity. It was written with ink on papyrus, typically in horizontal lines, with direction varying by tradition. Hieratic was characterized by its simplified, flowing forms that allowed rapid writing, and it exists in several stylistic stages, including a more informal “normal” hieratic and a more formal “book-hand” used for literary and ceremonial texts.

As Demotic script began to replace hieratic for everyday administrative purposes from around the 7th century BCE, hieratic gradually declined in daily use. Nevertheless, it continued to be employed for religious, scholarly, and literary texts for centuries, especially within temple and priestly contexts, until gradually supplanted by Demotic and later Coptic scripts in broad literacy.

Documentation and interpretation of hieratic rely on its signs’ simplifications relative to hieroglyphs, as well as palaeographic development across Egypt’s long history. Thousands of hieratic texts survive on papyrus and other media, providing essential sources for Egyptology in matters of administration, religion, and daily life.