Ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphics

The writing system is complex but relatively straight forward. The inventory of signs is divided into three major categories, namely logograms, signs that write out morphemes, phonograms, signs that represent one or more sounds and determinatives, signs that denote neither morphemes nor sounds that help with the meaning of a group of signs that precede them.

Traditionally Egyptologists divided the script into three types based on appearance : hieroglyphic, heratic, and demotic. Hieroglyphic is almost always inscribed on stones in large scale monuments. Hieratic is the "priestly" script extensively used on manuscripts and paintings, and is just a rather cursive form of monumental hieroglyphics. And finally, demotic is a highly cursive script that replaced hieratic, as the script for everyday use from 600 BCE onwards. In fact, some demotic signs translated into more than one hieratic or hieroglyphic signs, so there isn't a one to one correspondence between demotic and the other two systems.

Aside form the shape of the signs, the hieroglyphic and hieratic systems are very identical. Both date from the dawn of the Egyptian civilisation at the latetr half of the third millennium BCE at a time period called Predynastic period. Recently some new discoveries have shed light on an ancient Predynastic king named Scorpion I. His name has been found carved in the wilderness and in his tomb at Abydos. Abydos yielded a great number of inscribed seals dating from between 3400 and 3200 BCE, making them the oldest examples of Egyptian writing.

In addition to the monumental hieroglyphic, the cursive Heiratic also date from as early as the reign of king Ka in the form of pottery inscriptions. But it was in the fourth century that there were substansive records written in hieratic. While the hieroglyphic remained the same the hieratic became increasingly cursive, andan increasing amount of ligatures come into usage.

Eventually the ost cursive form of hieratic became the demotic, which gives no hint of its hieroglyphic origin. By 600BCE, the hieratic which was used tow rite documents on papyrus was retained only for religious writing. The demotic became the everyday script, used for accounting, literature, wriritngs, etc.

The last Egyptian inscription dates from the 5th century CE. By this time, Coptic, a Greek absed alphabet with some demotic signs, became the primary writing sysytem used in Egypt.