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Hieratic   Listen
adjective
Hieratic  adj.  Consecrated to sacred uses; sacerdotal; pertaining to priests.
Hieratic character, a mode of ancient Egyptian writing; a modified form of hieroglyphics, tending toward a cursive hand and formerly supposed to be the sacerdotal character, as the demotic was supposed to be that of the people. "It was a false notion of the Greeks that of the three kinds of writing used by the Egyptians, two for that reason called hieroglyphic and hieratic were employed only for sacred, while the third, the demotic, was employed for secular, purposes. No such distinction is discoverable on the more ancient Egyptian monuments; bur we retain the old names founded on misapprehension."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hieratic" Quotes from Famous Books



... hieroglyphs, except those denoting numbers, were pictures of objects. The writing is of three kinds. The first, the hieroglyphical, is composed of literal pictures, as a circle, O, for the sun, a curved line for the moon, a pointed oval for the mouth. The second sort of characters, the hieratic, and the third, the demotic, are curtailed pictures, which can thus be written more rapidly. They are seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... slabs came to light at Tell el Amarna bearing the hieroglyphic names of King Amenophis IV. and his father, Amenophis III. These had evidently served as lids to the chests. Some tablets also were inscribed with notes in hieratic, written in red ink. But in spite of these exceptions, it was at once recognised that all the documents were written in Babylonian cuneiform. The reading of the introductory lines on various tablets served to show that the find consisted of part of the Egyptian state archives ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... lends itself so well to poetical declamation, of which these remarkable people are very fond. The Zu-Vendi alphabet seems, Sir henry says, to be derived, like every other known system of letters, from a Phoenician source, and therefore more remotely still from the ancient Egyptian hieratic writing. Whether this is a fact I cannot say, not being learned in such matters. All I know about it is that their alphabet consists of twenty-two characters, of which a few, notably B, E, and O, are not very unlike our own. The whole affair is, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... an influence, near or remote, on the action.' This is true, and yet, all the same, the pedestal is too large for the statue. Salammbo, 'always surrounded with grave and exquisite things,' has something of the somnambulism which enters into the heroism of Judith; she has a hieratic beauty, and a consciousness as pale and vague as the moon whom she worships. She passes before us, 'her body saturated with perfumes,' encrusted with jewels like an idol, her head turreted with violet hair, the gold chain tinkling between her ankles; and is hardly more than an attitude, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... threshold of the repellent enclosure, grow used to the order and shape of the building, and it will not be long ere you are overcome by a warm sympathy, and then by a steadily increasing admiration for the host who dwells there. The hieratic face of the old bishop lights up, becomes strangely living, almost modern, in expression. You discover under the text one of the most passionate lives, most busy and richest in instruction, that history has to shew. What it teaches is ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand



Words linked to "Hieratic" :   demotic, beaux arts, hieroglyphic, priesthood, priestly, fine arts



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