HIERATIC 



3983 



HIEROGLYPHS 



Hieratic (Gr. hieratikos, sacred, 

 sacerdotal). Cursive script em- 

 ployed by the priestly scribes in 

 ancient Egypt. It was a simplified 

 and conventionalised form of hiero- 

 glyphic, normally written from 

 right to left in black, often with 

 rubrical characters in red. Trace- 

 able from the 1st dynasty to the 

 4th century A.D., notable examples 

 are the Xllth dynasty Prisse and 

 the XlXth dynasty Harris papyri. 

 Theban tombs of the New Empire 

 have yielded wood coffins, lime- 

 stone slabs, and stuccoed boards 

 bearing this script. Long regarded 

 as the parent of the Phoenician 

 alphabet, it is now considered to 

 have played a minor part, if any, 

 in that invention. 



Hiero I (Gr. Hieron). Tyrant of 

 Syracuse, 478-467 B.C. His great 

 exploit was a decisive naval victory 

 over the Etruscans near Cumae in 

 474. An Etruscan helmet, with its 

 dedicatory inscription, consecrated 

 to Apollo, is preserved in the British 

 Museum. Hiero was a generous 

 patron of art and literature, among 

 the notable men who resided at 



his court under his patronage be- 

 ing Aeschylus, Pindar, Bacchylides, 

 and Simonides. 



Hiero II. King of Syracuse, 

 270-216 B.C. He first distinguished 

 himself in the wars against Pyrrhus 

 .- ^^^ (q.v.), and be- 



^Ss. ing m a de a 

 general by the 

 Sy r acusans 

 eventually re- 

 ceived the 

 kingship. I n 

 the war be- 

 tween Rome 

 and Carthage, 

 Hiero at first 

 sided with Carthage, the Romans 

 having entered into an alliance 

 with the Mamertines, who had 

 seized Messina. After the defeat of 

 the Carthaginians and Syracusans 

 in 263, Hiero made peace, and re- 

 mained the friend and ally of the 

 Romans. He did much to im- 

 prove the finances of the 

 country, and certain laws relating 

 to agriculture and the corn supplies 

 called leges Hieronicae are men- 

 tioned by Cicero as still existing. 



HIEROGLYPHS: ORIGIN AND MEANING 



Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, of the British Museum 



From this article the reader may usefully turn to the one on Egypt. 



See also A ssyria ; Babylonia ; Cuneiform ; Rosetta Stone ; while 



Alphabet and Writing may also be consulted 



Name commonly applied to the pic- 

 ture characters which the Egyptians 

 used in writing. Tradition in 

 Egypt asserted that their invention 

 was due to Thoth, the god of all 

 learning, and they were employed 

 in all ceremonial and religious in- 

 scriptions and texts from the early 

 part of the Archaic Period (about 

 B.C. 4000) to the second or third 

 century A.D. In Egyptian texts 



S A i 

 they are called j A I " the words 



of the god," and so the Egyptian 

 picture writing was described by 

 classical writers as "Hieroglyphic," 

 i.e., " sacred writing." 



Three forms of Egyptian writing 

 are distinguished : 1. hieroglyphic j 

 2. hieratic ; 3. demotic. In the 

 first form the characters are all 

 pictures, generally easily recogniz- 

 able ; in the second only the most 

 salient features of the pictures are 

 preserved ; in the third the charac- 

 ters are modified and abbreviated 

 and finally become, in many in- 

 stances, mere conventional repre- 

 sentations of the hieroglyphs. The 

 knowledge of hieroglyphic writing 

 was lost, except among a few 

 learned priests and scribes, early 

 in the Roman Period, and all 

 attempts to decipher it were un- 

 successful until the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century, when 



Thomas Young (1773-1829) de- 

 duced the correct values of several 

 of the characters of the Egyptian 

 alphabet. 



Thanks to Zoega (1755-1809), it 

 was known that a king's name was 

 always written within an oval 



f I , but it was uncertain at 



which end of the oval the name 

 began. "There were -two monu- 

 ments that cleared up this diffi- 

 culty, viz., the Rosetta Stone in 

 the British Museum, and a stone 

 obelisk from Philae, which now 

 stands in the park at Kingston 

 Lacy, Dorset. Each of these 

 monuments contains a Greek as 

 well as an Egyptian version of 

 the inscription, and as it was 

 customary for kings to publish 

 their edicts and documents of 

 public importance in two or more 

 languages, it was held to be certain 

 that the subject matter of the 

 Egyptian and Greek texts on the 

 Rosetta Stone was the same. 



Now, on the Rosetta Stone 

 the royal name Ptolemy occurs in 



these forms: I. 



The Greek text shows that the 

 inscription is an edict of the priests 

 of Egypt, assembled in the temple 

 of Ptah in Memphis in March 

 B.C. 196, who decreed that special 

 honours should be paid to Ptolemy 

 V. Epiphanes, as a mark of their 

 appreciation of the great benefits 

 which he had conferred upon 

 Egypt. There was therefore no 

 doubt that the two cartouches 

 contained the name of Ptolemy, 

 and the Greek text made it clear 

 that the last eight characters in 

 the second cartouche represented 

 titles of the king. The obelisk 

 from Philae mentions two royal 

 names thus : 



i.e., Ptolemy and Cleopatra. 



A glance shows that with the 

 exception of one character, the 

 last, the second cartouche contain- 

 ing Ptolemy's name on the Rosetta 

 Stone is identical with that con- 

 taining Ptolemy's name on the 

 obelisk. Young then assumed that 

 the names began at the rounded 

 end of the cartouche, and he called 

 the first sign D P ; as this letter 

 occurs in the name of Cleopatra 

 on the obelisk, and it comes in the 

 middle of the name, he was certain 

 of the value of Q . The second 

 sign a he guessed was T, and 

 also that -iTj , which occurs in the 

 cartouche of Cleopatra as well as 

 in Ptolemy, had the value of U or 

 O. The letter L, which ulso 

 occurs in both cartouches, was 

 represented by J2i&, and the 

 following letter f must be M . 



The last letter || must be S, 

 because the Greek form of the 

 name ends in S . The two remain- 

 ing characters ()!]", he believed 

 represented some yowel, or com- 

 binations of vowels.. By examining 

 the variant forms of the names of 

 Ptolemy and Cleopatra in hiero- 

 glyphs he deduced the values of 



many other signs, e.g., _p=U, 

 o = R, c=3a=T, and so on, and 

 the names of Alexander, Philip, 

 Arsinoe, Berenice, etc., supplied 

 many others. The decipherment 

 of the Egyptian hieroglyphs was 

 carried to a triumphant conclusion 

 by J. F. Champollion (1790-1832), 

 who published a Hieroglyphic 

 Grammar and Dictionary and a 

 very largo number of hieroglyphic 

 inscriptions. On his work the 

 whole of the modern work on 

 Egyptian is based. 



