Egyptian hieratic

Egyptian hieratic is a cursive form of ancient Egyptian writing. It was mainly used for religious texts, but also for administrative documents, letters, and legal texts. It developed from early hieroglyphic writing in the early 2nd millennium BCE and continued to be used until the end of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in the 4th century BCE. There are two main types of hieratic script: "formal" hieratic and "cursive" hieratic. Formal hieratic was used for monumental inscriptions, while cursive hieratic was used for documents and letters. The hieratic script was written in ink on papyrus or leather. It was written using a reed pen, and the characters were either painted or incised. The hieratic script was very concise, and the characters were often abbreviated. This made the script very efficient for administrative documents, which often had to be produced in large quantities. The hieratic script was also very easy to learn, and scribes could be trained in a short period of time. This made it the ideal script for government officials, who often had to produce documents in a hurry. The hieratic script was eventually replaced by the Demotic script in the late period of ancient Egyptian history. The Demotic script was more cursive and easier to write, and it eventually became the standard script for all kinds of documents. Despite its decline in use, the hieratic script was still used for religious texts in some temples until the very end of ancient Egyptian history.