Ancient Egyptian Writing

The scribes of Egypt used three distinct scripts in their writing: hieratic, hieroglyphic and demotic.  The hieratic and demotic are merely cursive derivatives of hieroglyphics.  By the Roman period, the Coptic, a fourth script was used, which was based on the Greek alphabets and different principles.

The ancient Egyptians called Hieroglyphic scripts “mdju netjer”, which meant “words of the gods”.  Hieroglyphs were the earliest and longest-lived form of Egyptian script.  It is the most familiar to the modern observers when starting in awe at the columned halls at Karnak, the beautiful tomb paintings in the Valley of Kings & Queens, and on sarcophagi and coffins.

The Ibis-headed god Thoth was considered the patron deity of writings and scribes.  A relief from the temple of Ramesses II at Abydos shows the god sitting on a throne, holding a long scribal palette in one hand and in the other, holding the reed with which he is writing.  King Ramesses himself is shown assisting the god by holding an ink pot-like jar.

The first hieroglyphs appeared on labels and pottery objects dating back to about 3100 BCE, in the late Predynastic period and the last glyphs appeared on the island of Philae in a temple inscription carved in 394 ACE.  Originally, hieroglyphs were used to write different kinds of texts on different surfaces, but as hieratic script developed, hieroglyphic script became confined to religious and monumental usage, mostly carved in stones.  The Greeks, upon seeing these temple and other religious inscriptions, called the script “hiera grammata”, which meant “the sacred letters”, or “ta hierogyphica”, which meant “the sacred carved letters”.

A hieroglyphic inscription is arranged on its surface either in columns or in horizontal lines.  There are no punctuation marks or spaces to indicate the divisions between words.  The signs are generally inscribed facing rightward, when appeared in columnar form; they are usually read from right to left.  If they appear in horizontal lines, they are read from upper to lower.

Hieroglyphic script is largely pictorial in character.  Most are recognizable pictures of natural or fabricated objects, often symbolically color-painted.  The ground plan of a simple house, or pr, might stand for the word “house”.  These are called ideograms.

Hieroglyphic script also includes phonograms, sign-words for concepts that cannot be conveyed by a simple picture.  The phonogram is best represented by the “rebus principle”.  A rebus is a message spelled out in pictures that represent sounds rather than the things.

Hieratic were the ancient Egyptian cursive writings, used from the first dynasty (c. 2925 – c. 2755 BC) until about 200 BC.  Derived from the earlier, pictorial hieroglyphic writing used in carved or painted inscriptions, hieratic writings were generally written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus; its cursive form was more suited to such a medium than were the formal hieroglyphs.  It was originally written vertically and later horizontally from right to left.  After about 660 BC, demotic script replaced hieratic in most secular writings, but hieratic continued to be used by priests in the transcriptions of religious texts for several centuries.

Hieratic is an adoption of the hieroglyphic script, the signs being simplified to make their writing quicker.  Hieratic was the administrative and business script throughout most of its history and recorded documents of a literary, scientific and religious nature.  The earliest body of hieratic texts, thus far, is estate records, that date from the Fourth Dynasty. 

Writing was not one, but two inventions: first, the script by itself – a comprehensive series of signs made by a series of brush strokes, capable of representing all the words or sounds of human speech and second, the remarkable invention of the materials used to record, transmit and preserve these scripts, like the papyrus, the pen and the ink. 

The word “Demotic” comes from Greek, which meant “popular script”.  By the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemies, demotic was the only native script in general daily use.  It is very cursive script, having been derived from hieratic, making it difficult to read and almost impossible to transcribe into hieroglyphic context.

Demotic scripts were generally administrative, legal and commercial, though there are a few literary composition as well as scientific and religious scripts.