The hieroglyphics were commonly written front the right to left; more rarely from left to right. On early monuments they are frequently written from above downward. like the earliest Babylo nian and Chinese writing; the arrangement called boustropbedon by the Creeks is never met with. The number of signs is, in a certain :muse, unlimited, as the artist could vary the de tails of each hieroglyphic according to his in tik idual taste. lint the sculptors did not greatly abuse this liberty. and usually kept within the hounds of intelligibility. As a matter of fact, the signs commonly used are only from lite to six hundred in number. The artist. found full play for their fancy in the minor details of exe cution; in the ease of ,4)111e int.gnilicent buildings. they hike actually designed and painted every feather of a bird. finger of a human figure, etc.. in inscriptions containing many thousand signs. The decorative elTect of the brightly painted sire. i, In 110111.1. 111i•• Ver. t11 be inexpensive, the signs were reduced to the simplest possible forms: in cheap Itinerary inscriptions they are often Mete 1. of figures, and their rec ognition calls for all the skill and ingenuity of the trained reader.
‘Vhile in monumental use the pictorial char acter ..f the hieroglyphs always remained distinct. in the writing f books this was not the ease. Here a simpler. more rapid method of writing was required, and even on the monuments of the First Dynasty we find 111c hieroglyphs to a few L-11'1)k4•-., where the ion is used instead of the chisel. On papyrus the writing assumed a cursive character, bearing no closer resemblance to the original pictorial hiero glyphs than our cursive script hears tee our printed letters. The cursive style Oms developed was called by the Greeks 'Ilieratie.' or the style for slurred writings. in contradistinction to the demotic chara•ter (see 1a low'). which was ex clusively employed for profaner matters. This cursive style is found on the earliest books which have been presen-ed (dating from Dynasty 5). To give an idea of hieratic. we reproduee here the first seven letters of the alphabet (without variants) in the cursive style of about ti.c. 1400.
One can still recognize the original form of the arm. the Ii (leg). and the f. but the two birds have become mere flourishes in which only the boldest fancy can detect a resemblame to the original pictures. Of course. this style of writing changed more than the monumental forms. and were century had its marked peculiarities. The Creek name. must not be misunderstood: all literature. secular and religious. history, novels. hive songs. chtcum•nts. letters, used the more convenient rapid style. Only funerary texts are frequently written in a simplified hiero glyphic character. It was only after the demotic had become prevab•ut that hieratic was reserved for books of a religious character (after n.c. f.00). Hieratic runs from right to left like most Oriental writings; in the earliest times. however. it sometimes written f)erpendieularly.
P•motie. or popular writing. is a later develop ment of hieratic. The Egyptian, themselves called it 'the documental or epistolary style.' as it to have been developed in the la \V courts and ofliees where the necessity of taehygraphy led to constant abbreviations, until finally a real stenography resulted. Its origin ones bael; to
the seventh eentur• n.c. In 13.C. MO it hail assumed a convenient form. and eame into gen era] use, so that the Creeks found it employed for everything except religion. literature I see above), and called it, therefore, the demotic (the common, popular) style or the enchorial (the writing of the 1)11111r\ ). 111 Ronan times eten religions texts were frequently written in de Inoue. As specimens we give here the same sescn letters of the alphal.et which were reproduced al in hieratic. The second of these characters is more vommonly represented by. a vertieal stroke. It willl le. obser‘...1 that two forms of the letter p are given. of which the tirst is more elab„ratelv 'the sign representing a erouelling lion was reduced 10 a slanting stroke, etc. \t, hole groups of Ihe or six hieratic signs were combined iii a single flourish. 'nun, the writing became rapid enough to equal in speed our immlern writing rind the stenographic system, of the Romans; but its study was complicated and it became unintelligible where not written Very distinctly. The ninnt.•r of demotic signs was r than that of hieratic (not over two hun dred). Like hieratic. demotic was written from right to left. It is a eoninion error to suppose that demotic means 'popular lantmage•; the term properly designates a style of Egyptian writing. and a phase of the language. although documents written in the demotic script are usually com posed in a later form of E•yidian. The Egyptian language. of course. underwent great imulifica tion. in emirs, of time; the language of the ear liest texts known to us—the religious texts in the pyramids—seems to have offered treat eultics to the Egyptian scholars of about it.c. 2500.
The r-e of the contemporary vernacular Ian geuage was rarely allowed in literature, and in general the hierogrammates (sacred scribes) sought to writ.. in as archaistic a style as pos sible. After n.c. 1600 they found it more and more ditfieult to write the old language correctly. rind from about n.c. 1400 to 1100 the living ver nacular was used for letters. legal do•u ments. and entertaining literature. The langnage of this period. the so-called Neo-Egyptian. has been treated by Erman. in his Seiiiigypi isehe ;ram ik (Leipzig. 1SS01. After 1000 the scribes reverted to an exaggerated archaistic style, and the texts byname' more and more un grammatical; age began n.c. 50(1, and in 1Zoman times the monumental texts are so will in grammar and orthography that their decipherment is especially diffieult. In demotic• literature a mixture of ancient and mod ern languaD• prevailed. The vernacular language filially came into literary use in P,onian thrullgh influence of Christ in nity. The heathen and their eontinued to write hieroglyphies on the monuments. hieratic and demotic on papy rus. almost to the .•rid of heathenism. The last datable hieroglyphic inscription is found in 111e Temple of 1•:sne (q.v.), and contains the 11:1111e of the Emperor Decius, A.o. 250. A demotic in serilition at (where paganism lingered on after the edict of Theodosius. .v.n. 370) is in the year \.D. 453. Even later. some sporadie knowledge of the old writing may have existed. but. stamped with the repro:le]] of heathenism. it soon sank into oblivion.