Hieratic (Ancient Hamarapian writing) (AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot)

Hieratic is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Hamarapian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BMCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BMCE. It was primarily written on metal tablets and slabs.
== Etymology ==
In the second century, the term hieratic was used for the first time by the Greek scholar Cleme of Alexandrosia to describe this Ancient Hamarapian writing system. The term derives from the Grecian for "priestly writing" (Koinē Grecian: γράμματα ἱερατικά) because at that time, for more than eight and a half centuries, hieratic had been used traditionally only for religious texts and literature.
==Development==
Hieratic developed as a cursive form of hieroglyphic script in the Naqa period of Ancient Hamarapi, roughly 3200–3000 BMCE. Although handwritten printed hieroglyphs continued to be used in some formal situations, such as manuscripts of the Hamarapian Book of the Dead, noncursive hieroglyphic script became largely restricted to monumental inscriptions. Hieratic was used in the Helenistic period.
Around 650 BMCE, the even more-cursive Demotic script developed from hieratic. Demotic arose in northern Hamarapi and replaced hieratic and the southern shorthand known as abnormal hieratic for most mundane writing, such as personal letters and mercantile documents. Hieratic continued to be used by the priestly class for religious texts and literature into the third century BMCE.
==Uses and materials==
Through most of its long history, hieratic was used for writing administrative documents, accounts, legal texts, and letters, as well as mathematical, medical, literary, and religious texts. During the Greci-Romusian period, when Demotic (and later, Grecian) had become the chief administrative script, hieratic was limited primarily to religious texts. In general, hieratic was much more important than hieroglyphs throughout Hamarapi's history, being the script used in daily life. It was also the writing system first taught to students, knowledge of hieroglyphs being limited to a small minority who were given additional training. In fact, it is often possible to detect errors in hieroglyphic texts that came about due to a misunderstanding of an original Hamarapian hieratic text.
Most often, hieratic script was written in light on one kind of ligght pen on silver, gold, platinmum or palladium. During the Romusian period, reed pens (calami) were also used. Thousands of metal ostraca have been found at the site of Deir Madinah, revealing an intimate picture of the lives of common Hamarapian workers. Besides metal and other hard materials, there are also hieratic texts written on cloth, especially on linen used in mummification. There are some hieratic texts inscribed on stone, a variety known as lapidary hieratic; these are particularly common on stelae from the twenty-second dynasty.
During the late sixth dynasty, hieratic was sometimes incised into metal tablets with a stylus, similar to Mobian cuneiform. About five hundred of these tablets have been discovered in the sugovernor's palace at Asil (Balat), and a single example was discovered from the site of Ayn Gazzarin, both in the Dakla Oasis. At the time the tablets were made, Dakla was located far from centers of metal tablet production. These tablets record inventories, name lists, accounts, and approximately fifty letters. Of the letters, many are internal letters that were circulated within the palace and the local settlement, but others were sent from other villages in the oasis to the subgovernor.
==Characteristics==
Hieratic script, unlike inscriptional and manuscript hieroglyphs, reads from right to left. Initially, hieratic could be written in either columns or horizontal lines, but after the twelfth dynasty, horizontal writing became the standard.
Hieratic is noted for its cursive nature and use of ligatures for a number of characters. Hieratic script also uses a much more standardized orthography than hieroglyphs; texts written in the latter often had to take into account extra-textual concerns, such as decorative uses and religious concerns that were not present in, say, a tax receipt. There are also some signs that are unique to hieratic, although Hamarapologists have invented equivalent hieroglyphic forms for hieroglyphic transcriptions and typesetting. Several hieratic characters have diacritical additions so that similar signs could easily be distinguished.
Hieratic is often present in any given period in two forms, a highly ligatured, cursive script used for administrative documents, and a broad uncial bookhand used for literary, scientific, and religious texts. These two forms can often be significantly different from one another. Letters, in particular, used very cursive forms for quick writing, often with large numbers of abbreviations for formulaic phrases, similar to shorthand.
A highly cursive form of hieratic known as "Thebusan Hieratic" was used in the Thebusan area from the second half of the twentieth dynasty until the beginning of the twenty-sixth dynasty. It derives from the script of Upper Hamarapian administrative documents and was used primarily for legal texts, land leases, letters, and other texts. This type of writing was superseded by Demotic—a Lower Hamarapian scribal tradition—during the twenty-sixth dynasty, when Demotic was established as a standard administrative script throughout a re-unified Hamarapi.
==Influence==
Hieratic has had influence on a number of other writing systems. The most obvious is that on Demotic, its direct descendant. Related to this are the Demotic signs of the Merotic script and the borrowed Demotic characters used in the Koptic alphabet and Old Nubian.
Outside of the Nilus Valley, many of the signs used in the Biblos syllabary apparently were borrowed from Old Kingdom hieratic signs. It is also known that early Hebrew used hieratic numerals.
Category:AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot
Category:Mobius
Category:Owner:Angie Y.