DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0278
25S PHARAOHS, FELLAHS, AND EXPLORERS.
hundred years before our era. By this time the Egyptians
had become a highly commercial, and an extremely litigious,
people. They bought and sold, borrowed, mortgaged, and
lent with feverish activity, and were so perpetually quarrel-
ling over their bargains, their leases, their securities, their
marriage-settlements, and their inheritances, that a writing
better adapted to legal and commercial purposes than the
literary hieratic was urgently needed. As usual, the demand
[* f« * snM t; r r- *.;**»*?&* tin*
4-2+ *jd\<j I 1» » > i I
DEMOTIC WB1TIKO.
From a funerary inscription written with the reed pen upon a wooden tablet.
created the supply, and demotic became the ordinary script
of the people. In the mean while neither the hieroglyphic
nor the hieratic writings had wholly died out. The hiero-
glyphic continued in use for stone-cut inscriptions as long as
the ancient language endured; that is to say, it is found
on monuments of the later Roman period, the names of
all the Caesars, from Augustus to Decius, being transliter-
ated into Egyptian, carved in hieroglyphic characters, and
enclosed in the royal ovals of the Pharaohs, on temples and
tablets dating from the twenty-seventh to the two hundred
and fiftieth year of the Christian era.
The hieratic writing was more short-lived than the hiero-
glyphic. Beginning from the time of the Eleventh Dynasty,
it continued to be employed for literary purposes down to
the period of the Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth Dynasty,
when it was finally superseded by the demotic. Our muse-
ums contain thousands of hieratic papyri, consisting chiefly
of extracts from The Booh of the Dead, besides works on
medicine and mathematics, tales, poems, essays, hymns, mag-
hundred years before our era. By this time the Egyptians
had become a highly commercial, and an extremely litigious,
people. They bought and sold, borrowed, mortgaged, and
lent with feverish activity, and were so perpetually quarrel-
ling over their bargains, their leases, their securities, their
marriage-settlements, and their inheritances, that a writing
better adapted to legal and commercial purposes than the
literary hieratic was urgently needed. As usual, the demand
[* f« * snM t; r r- *.;**»*?&* tin*
4-2+ *jd\<j I 1» » > i I
DEMOTIC WB1TIKO.
From a funerary inscription written with the reed pen upon a wooden tablet.
created the supply, and demotic became the ordinary script
of the people. In the mean while neither the hieroglyphic
nor the hieratic writings had wholly died out. The hiero-
glyphic continued in use for stone-cut inscriptions as long as
the ancient language endured; that is to say, it is found
on monuments of the later Roman period, the names of
all the Caesars, from Augustus to Decius, being transliter-
ated into Egyptian, carved in hieroglyphic characters, and
enclosed in the royal ovals of the Pharaohs, on temples and
tablets dating from the twenty-seventh to the two hundred
and fiftieth year of the Christian era.
The hieratic writing was more short-lived than the hiero-
glyphic. Beginning from the time of the Eleventh Dynasty,
it continued to be employed for literary purposes down to
the period of the Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth Dynasty,
when it was finally superseded by the demotic. Our muse-
ums contain thousands of hieratic papyri, consisting chiefly
of extracts from The Booh of the Dead, besides works on
medicine and mathematics, tales, poems, essays, hymns, mag-