Why Ancient Egyptian Writing Is More Than Just Hieroglyphics

Pyramid for rent... Five gold coins...a month Oof, that’s hard work. Luckily for ancient Egyptians, hieroglyphics weren’t their only writing method. It was just the first. Let’s dig in. Ariel Singer: The development of hieroglyphs is a pretty complicated set of events. Ariel: The very earliest parts, which are called proto-writing, are from the pre-dynastic period, which was over 5,000 years ago. Ariel: The first things that we can kind of say were really a proto-writing were carved into little bone and clay tags, and they identified objects and places. This “proto-writing” was a mostly elite practice, seen on significant burial sites and official correspondence. It foreshadowed the next stage of ancient Egyptian writing, which is where we get to the pyramids. Ariel: This is called Old Egyptian. Ariel: This is the type of Egyptian that was being written during the age of the pyramids. So when Khufu was building his Great Pyramid, this is what people were writing and reading. After “Old” comes “Middle” Ariel: You see it used in monumental inscriptions from the Middle Kingdom all the way through to the end of the pharaonic period. Ariel: It was used for every type of text, religious texts, letters, literary texts, medical mathematical texts. And after “Middle”... Ariel: So the next iteration of hieroglyphs is called Late Egyptian. And this was not actually commonly written in hieroglyphs. It was more commonly written in hieratic. Hieratic is essentially a cursive version of hieroglyphs. It was found on papyrus, rocks, tablets, and basically any surface you’d use to jot something down. Ariel: You weren't using hieroglyphs in your daily life. You certainly weren't writing your letter in hieroglyphs unless it had a religious or monumental royal context to it; you were writing in hieratic. Late Egyptian came with a few linguistic changes. More people using written language brought new words and new grammar to the ancient world. Eventually, though, hieratic was mostly replaced with demotic: a newer, simpler form of cursive hieroglyphs that barely resembles what you see on the pyramids. As the nearby Greek empire expanded, demotic was displaced by Coptic. This script, based on the Greek alphabet, spelled the end of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. You know, I think I’ll just hand out flyers.