DICT.TW Dictionary Taiwan

 Hi·er·at·ic a.  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.   --W. H. Ward (Johnson's Cyc.).
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