Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Demotic (from Ancient Greek: δημοτικός dēmotikós, 'popular') is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts.
[Note 1] Demotic became the most common system for writing the Egyptian language, and hieroglyphic and hieratic were thereafter mostly restricted to religious uses. In the fourth century BC, Egypt came to be ruled by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty , and Greek and demotic were used side-by-side in Egypt under Ptolemaic rule and then that of the ...
Hieratic (/ h aɪ ə ˈ r æ t ɪ k /; Ancient Greek: ἱερατικά, romanized: hieratiká, lit. 'priestly') is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE.
Ancient Egyptians used three forms of writing: Demotic, Hieratic, and Hieroglyphic. Demotic writing was easier for medieval Arabic scholars to decipher because materials in more than one script and language were available to read (Demotic, Coptic, Greek). Demotic writing was known as the common script and was similar to the late Coptic language ...
As the latest stage of pre-Coptic Egyptian, demotic texts have long been transliterated using the same system(s) used for hieroglyphic and hieratic texts. However, in 1980, Demotists adopted a single, uniform, international standard based on the traditional system used for hieroglyphic, but with the addition of some extra symbols for vowels and ...
For example, comparing the number of times a word appeared in the Greek text with the Egyptian text, he was able to point out which glyphs spelt the word "king", but he was unable to read the word. Using Åkerblad's decipherment of the demotic letters p and t, he
Nor does it belong to one of the cursive stages of ancient Egyptian writing: hieratic, abnormal hieratic, or demotic." Wilson added that "it does not conform to the normal pattern of cursive," and that because it was purported to be altered it may "remove this context from the professional analysis by the Egyptologist."
In 1976, shortly after the restoration of democracy, Demotic was finally adopted for use everywhere in education and became the language of the state for all official purposes. [8] By that time, however, the form of Demotic used in practice was no longer the pure popular dialect, but had begun to assimilate elements from the Katharevousa ...