Demotic egyptian

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The term demotic refers to both the Egyptian script and language that arose in the last stage of Ancient Egypt. Demotic ideographic writing was used to write it. It derives from the hieratic used in the Nile delta. The term was used for the first time by the Greek historian Herodotus, to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic writing.

After its introduction, hieratic continued to be used for religious purposes, while demotic was used for economic and literary purposes. In contrast to hieratic, which was usually written on papyri or ostraca, demotic was sometimes carved on stone and wood.

It began to be used around 660 B.C. C. and became the dominant script of Ancient Egypt around 600 B.C. At the beginning of the century IV was replaced by the Greek language in official texts; its last known use was in the year 452 of our Era, engraved on the walls of the temple dedicated to Isis, in Philé.

Hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic scripts

Some signs of hieroglytic, hierarchical and demotic writings.

Three basic types of writing developed in ancient Egypt:

Egyptian hieroglyphical ideographic writing was used from c. 3200 BC on epolymas tablets, ritual objects and monuments. It was the oldest and most complex. Hieroglyphics come from the Greek ta hieroglyphica (ιερος sacred, γλυφειν record) and means sacred engravings.
The egyptian hyertic ideographic writing emerged as an abbreviated graph of the hieroglyph. It comes from the Greek hieratikaWhich means priestly.
Demotic ideographic writing is an abbreviated form of hierarchical writing. The term demotic comes from the Greek demotika, popular, concerning everyday affairs.

Old Demotic

Old Demotic was conceived in Lower Egypt during the late Twenty-fifth Dynasty, appearing on stelae from the Serapeum of Saqqara. It is generally dated between 650 and 400 B.C. C., although most of the texts written in Old Demotic date from the XXVI Dynasty and the period of Persian domination, the XXVII Dynasty. After the reunification of Egypt under Psameticus I, Demotic replaced Hieratic in Upper Egypt, particularly during the reign of Amasis, when it became the official administrative and legal script. During this period, the demotic was used only in administrative, legal and commercial texts, while the hieroglyphic and hieratic were reserved for ceremonial texts.

Text in demotic writing of the ptolemaic era (ostracon).

Middle Demotic (Ptolemaic)

Middle Demotic (c. 400 to 30 BCE) is the stage of writing used during the Ptolemaic period. From the fourth century B.C. C., the use of demotic grows, as can be seen by the increase in its use in literary and religious texts. Towards the end of the III century B.C. C., the Greek language was already more important, since it was the administrative language of the country. Demotic contracts lost most of their legal force unless there was a notation in Greek placed by the authorities.

Text in demotic writing, in a replica of the Rosetta Stone.

Late Demotic (Roman)

By early Roman Egypt, Demotic was used less and less in public life in favor of Hellenistic Greek. There are, however, several literary texts written in Late Demotic (from about 30 BC to 452), especially in the 1st and 2nd centuries, although the number of Demotic texts declined rapidly towards the end of the 2nd century. Later, the demotic was only used in some ostraca, annotations to Greek texts, labels on mummies and graffiti. The last demotic inscription is dated December 11, 452 and consists of a graffiti made on the walls of the temple of Isis, in File, Egypt.

The demotic language

Demotic Egyptian, used between the 4th century B.C. C. and V d. C., is a variety of the Egyptian language, which represents the last pre-Christian linguistic stage and shares much with the later Coptic language, used between the V centuries AD. C. and XV d. In earlier phases of demotic, like texts written in the old demotic script, it probably represented the spoken language of the time. But, as it was used more and more solely for literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, giving the later Demotic texts an artificial character, similar to Classical Middle Egyptian usage during the Ptolemaic period.

Unitellar signs and transcription

like its Egyptian progenitor, Demotic has a "uniliteral" or "alphabetic" which could be used for individual phonemes. These are the most common signs in Demotic, making in the middle a third and a half of all the signs in all the texts; Foreign words are also written exclusively with these signs Later (Roman Period) texts use these signs more frequently.

The table below gives a list of unitellar signs with transcription, their hieroglyphic origin, the Coptic Letters derived from them and their uses.

Transcript

Sign

Origin Heroglifico

Dissenting Copto