“Hieratic (lit. 'priestly’) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BC. It was primarily written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus.

In the second century, the term hieratic was used for the first time to describe this Ancient Egyptian writing system by the Greek scholar Clement of Alexandria. The term derives from the Greek for “priestly writing” because at that time, for more than eight and a half centuries, hieratic had been used traditionally only for religious texts and literature.” [X]