Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Hieratic is the name given to Egypt’s oldest cursive system of hieroglyphs, which was used primarily as handwriting and served as a multifunctional script for more than three millennia, until the third century BCE. As early as 1820, Champollion recognized the connection between hieroglyphics and hieratic. Hieratic was written in ink on papyrus and ostraca, as well as on wooden tablets, linen, stone surfaces, etc. The characters could also be carved or chiseled into clay, wood, rock surfaces, or stone objects. Unlike hieroglyphics, hieratic was always written from right to left, and the signs evolved from separate elements in single columns to horizontal lines of complete text, with increasing use of ligatures and abbreviations, especially in administrative contexts. In addition, most manuscripts reveal personal idiosyncrasies of the scribes. From 750 BCE on, hieratic was partially replaced by the abnormal hieratic script and later by Demotic. However, it remained in use until Roman times, primarily for ritual, funerary, and scholarly texts. Increasingly enhanced by digital methods, the study of hieratic is based on paleographic analysis and comparison, which aid our understanding of the texts and allow us to date a manuscript or identify an individual scribe. Writing practices, the social milieu of scribes, and the various scripts, text genres, and modes of transmission have become current research topics. In addition, the discovery, decipherment, adequate documentation, and interpretation of other testimonies to hieratic writing are of interest.