Hieratic adj. Consecrated to sacred uses; sacerdotal; pertaining to priests. Hieratic character, a mode of ancient Egyptian writing; a modified form of hieroglyphics, tending toward a cursive hand and formerly supposed to be the sacerdotal character, as the demotic was supposed to be that of the people. "It was a false notion of the Greeks that of the three kinds of writing used by the Egyptians, two for that reason called hieroglyphic and hieratic were employed only for sacred, while the third, the demotic, was employed for secular, purposes. No such distinction is discoverable on the more ancient Egyptian monuments; bur we retain the old names founded on misapprehension."
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