Tracking the origins of Heretic Writing

CAIRO – 7 October 2017: Bibliotheca Alexandrina Antiquities Museum and Bibliotheca Alexandrina Center for Calligraphy Studies will be launching a course exploring Heretic Writing from October 23 to November 1.

Entitled “Hieratic Writing: From the Age of the Pyramids to the Ramesside Period”, the course is part of a series of lectures about the ancient Egyptian language and its historical importance.

Giacomo Cavillier, Professor of Egyptology and Coptic Civilization at the Università Popolare del Mediterraneo in Torino, Italy will be leading the course.

Heretic writing started in Ancient Egypt after knowing Papyrus papers. Ancient Egyptians used it from the early documents in the early dynasties to the age of Ramesside. That meant that Heretic writing used for more than 2000 years.

Hieroglyphic writing form was not easy to be written on papers, that is why ancient Egyptian simplified the signs of the Hieroglyphic ones. It was called Heretic because it was commonly used by the priests.

It was used in documentation, literature, education, and letters. Each letter and symbol in heretic writing system reflected one in the Hieroglyphic writing system.

The improvement of writing is the direction of the text. Heretic was written vertically from the early dynasties period to 12th dynasty’s period. It was also written from right to left.

In Amnemhat III period, the direction of the writing was changed from vertical to horizontal to enhance the writing quality. In the period of Ramesside, a new form of Heretic writings was intorduced called Abnormal Heretic.