|
| | | | | | |
| [HRG: T30] | knife | ds | ds | | cut, prick, cut-|
| | | | | | ting instrument |
+------------+-------------+-----------------+-----------+----------+-----------------+

_Demotic._--Widely varying degrees of cursiveness are at all periods
observable in hieratic; but, about the XXVIth Dynasty, which
inaugurated a great commercial era, there was something like a
definite parting between the uncial hieratic and the most cursive form
afterwards known as demotic. The employment of hieratic was
thenceforth almost confined to the copying of religious and other
traditional texts on papyrus, while demotic was used not only for all
business but also for writing literary and even religious texts in the
popular language. By the time of the XXVth Dynasty the cursive of the
conservative Thebais had become very obscure. A better form from Lower
Egypt drove this out completely in the time of Amasis II. and is the
true demotic. Before the Macedonian conquest the cursive ligatures of
the old demotic gave birth to new symbols which were carefully and
distinctly formed, and a little later an epigraphic variety was
engraved on stone, as in the case of the Rosetta stone itself. One of
the most characteristic distinctions of later demotic is the
minuteness of the writing.

Hieroglyphic is normally written from right to left, the signs facing
to the commencement of the line; hieratic and demotic follow the same
direction. But monumental hieroglyphic may also be written from left
to right, and is constantly so arranged for purposes of symmetry, e.g.
the inscriptions on the two jambs of a door are frequently turned in
opposite directions; the same is frequently done with the short
inscriptions scattered over a scene amongst the figures, in order to
distinguish one label from another.

In modern founts of type, the hieroglyphic signs are made to run from
left to right, in order to facilitate the setting where European text
is mixed with the Egyptian. The table on next page shows them in their
more correct position, in order to display more clearly their relation
to the hieratic and demotic equivalents.

Clement of Alexandria states that in the Egyptian schools the pupils
were firs