#hieroglyphic

⊱⊱ Judaism, religious studies ⊱⊱ Classical literature, vampiric fiction ⊱⊱ Middle Kingdom Egyptian ⊱⊱ Geometry

I’m always happy to talk to anyone who’s interested in these things, ask me a question whenever. + I take avodah zarah seriously, will block if I see it.

1580s, "of the nature of Egyptian monumental writing," from Late Latin hieroglyphicus, from Greek hieroglyphikos "hieroglyphic; of Egyptian writing," from hieros "sacred" (see ire) + glyphē "carving," from glyphein "to carve" (from PIE root *gleubh- "to tear apart, cleave").

Plutarch began the custom of using the adjective (ta hieroglyphika) as a noun in reference to the Egyptian way of writing. The noun use of hieroglyphic in English dates to 1580s (hieroglyphics). Related: Hieroglyphical; hieroglyphically.

The answer is almost assuredly there is, but I haven't sat down and tried to work it out. A real world analog is hieratic. You've probably seen a lot of Egyptian hieroglyphs in tomb inscriptions, and they're all quite precise:

And that's because scribes spent, you know, years on them. They could afford to be quite precise. These were tomb inscriptions, not notes jotted down to a friend. For that, there was a cursive form called hieratic, and it looked like this:

Quite different! Suddenly you can't actually figure out what the heck these are pictures of anymore. It also flows much better, and certainly could be written a lot faster.

Valyrian absolutely would have a form like this, but it would take a lot of figuring out. It's one thing with an alphabet or a similar system, given that there are so many characters, but with over 400 glyphs, you'd have to figure out each one, and make sure it all fit together and made sense... I haven't gotten there yet. But absolutely, such a form should exist, and would be used for most everyday written notes and letters, the full glyphs being reserved for inscriptions, books, proclamations, signs, etc.

If yes, then welcome to the Tecesarma project!