bad haiku

It forces me to remember that, no, it wasn't 'just about Ancient Egypt'. My ass can read that with no issue. Not many people can do that. It's a skill, and one many people with a lot less skill in it will try to square up on. It feels egotistical, but at the end of the day, no, I do know more about this than most people.

the club in question:

No, it's not a one to one conversion. I said it's like shorthand, and I meant that. Each sign has its own form, but it's not necessarily anything like the sign it represents. They're quick forms of the signs, designed to be written in ink rather than carved in stone (because they really didn't write in full glyphs in ink unless they were doing something special like a Book of the Dead, and even then that's called Cursive Hieroglyphs) and often they're just lines because there's an assumption that the reader is familiar with what *should* be there.

This is the difference:

The second image here is the *original* text, whereas the first image is the transcribed version into hieroglyphs which is easier for most Egyptologists to parse than the Hieratic original.

Some signs *might* look like their hieroglyphic counterpart, but the majority of them have a different form all together, and you have to be able to parse that. For instance, you have to know what you're looking at to understand that:

is

The full section is easier, but you still have to know some things:

You've really got to know what you're looking at to understand that the edge of the cartouche, the sun symbol, and the wsr (jackal head on a stick) symbol are all rolled into that sign that looks like a 13.

It ain't easy.

so if i understood your explanation, unlike Coptic which is alphabetic (it is based on the Greek alphabet), Hieratic is still logographic and represents each Hieroglyphic symbol as a Hieratic symbol? well aside from what i can best describe as "ligatures"?

also if it is a shorthand and based on your explanation, i presume that you cannot list an "enshrined" sequence of graphical representations of the glyphs (and their ligatures) as you could for Hieroglyphs (or Coptic), so it's closer to a writing style or variant rather than its own separate and self contained script? and i'd imagine scribes of the time who wrote in Hieratic would still be fluent in reading/writing Hieroglyphs since you apparently cannot really use Hieratic without that knowledge?

No, it's a script not a writing style. There are graphical representations of each sign, but as I said, they're not 1:1 identical to the Hieroglyphic counterpart. The water sign 'n' 𓈖 in the Hieroglyphic script is a zig-zag line, but in Hieratic (shown in the examples above) it's a straight line, it's still the same sign, it's just not a complete match. If it was, it would defeat the purpose of the script in the first place.

Take this sign (Gardiner's sign M8) which represents a pool of lilies. It has a recognisible shape because there is a 'set' way of writing this sign in Hieratic. However, you'll notice that each example, which are all from different scribes, across different texts and time periods, are all slightly different. This is because they're all handwritten, so there will be variations.

Again, while they all clearly have 'there is a set way to depict this' some signs are consistent and others are not. It all depends on who is writing. Sometimes they're not even consistent within a text written by the same scribe and that's because handwriting is just like that.

Think of it more like typing versus handwriting. Hieroglyphs are a 'typed script' because they are quite literally carved into something. That takes precision, and thus the only variation is in art style. Hieratic is the written script, which is the same thing, just adapted for a different medium.

So I can type here 'This is a standard typed version of English'

Then:

The difference in how I write the letters is based on the style of the handwriting I'm using, not the script it comes from. The letters are set, I just write them differently, and this is how Hieratic works.

In an attempt to keep this post from getting any longer, it's very tempting to post the wikipedia page for Demotic, which would tell you the same information, but I won't because we've come this far.

Demotic is the stage after Hieratic. I swear I explained this in an ask or a comment in the last 48hrs, but I don't remember and I'm not searching for it rn. But essentially, when they come into contact with the Greeks and others in the Mediterranean/ANE, they start adding Greek and Aramaic words to their lexicon, and adopting new grammar. Thus the Hieratic script shifts to accommodate this change, becoming Demotic, but the monumental inscriptions remain in Middle Egyptian (it's a weird quirk, but only Old and Middle Egyptian ever appear on monuments/tombs. Late Egyptian is exclusively written in Hieratic).

Initially, though, Demotic does get used on a few monuments instead of hieroglyphs, but they quickly switch it to handwritten text only. Even then, it's only used administratively. Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and Late Egyptian Hieratic still get used on monuments (Hieros) and written literature (Hieratic) respectively. It's a weird time where they're essentially using three different forms of language. I can only liken it to current times by comparing it to how we use language in legal documents (usually pretty stilted and formalised (like Middle Egyptian, it's from a different time in the past), the writing in published novels (structured/more formal but much less so, just like Late Egyptian), and then how we're all speaking on a day to day basis (colloquial, informal, and how Demotic comes to be). Basically, it's reflective of the change in populace and therefore speech patterns, and how the Egyptians adapted their language as these changes occurred. Linguistically it's fascinating to watch the slow change from Late Egyptian where vowels are beginning to soften to better reflect how they're spoken (r's become l's and all that jazz) to Demotic where there are far more loan words that need to be spelt phonetically also with softened vowels, so the original Hieratic script gets frankensteined to represent these new sounds.

Demotic then supercedes Late Egyptian, which falls out of use entirely by about c.400 BCE when the Ptolemies arrive. The language gains a higher importance and begins to be used for religious texts and literature instead of Late Egyptian. This continues right through to the Roman period when it basically becomes the every day written text (more people are literate in Egypt in this period compared to any other, so it's not surprising it becomes the default). But after the death of Cleopatra, and being under full Roman rule, Greek becomes the main language (because the Romans spoke Greek and Latin) by about 200 CE. Demotic still gets used on labels after this but it's largely died out by c.450 CE. Since it is the Greek script that's most common, the Egyptian language switches from the Demotic script to the Greek script, which is how you get Coptic. Though, I should note, that its first appearance is during the Ptolemaic period when Demotic texts were transcribed into Greek lettering to make them easier to read, and has preserved some pronunciation.

Bonus tiny baby cyan on top of adult cyan

I made this comic around the time I started developing characters for FLY. It came from a time I wore a pink shirt in 5th grade and my peer told me I wasn’t supposed to be “pretty”

Through the overwhelming love I’ve received there were a few notions that I noticed in all the noise. One especially concerning is this idea that boys should not be portrayed in ways that have anything to do with femininity. But I believe there is a world where boys can be loved for all the colors, be soft, be strong, be bold. And know that the things the love never make them any less of a man. I made fly for the black boy in me that was afraid to where pink. I want that kid to soar.

VHS — permanent marker on paper, 23 × 30 inches, 2010

When folks tell you that socialism is a white ideology, show them this thread. (x)

They're smart fuckin birds, I believe in them