Since Hieratic is simply a cursive form of Hieroglyphic, it has the same types of signs.  One of these with which you are no doubt familiar is determinatives.  Most words in Egyptian are accompanied by one or more determiantives.  In fact, picking out determinatives in a text is one way of finding where one word ends and the next begins.  They are of course essential in many cases for us to know which of several words of different meaning that are otherwise spelled the same.

In this lesson a number of common and useful determinatives are presented.  Some of these are also used as phonetic signs, so they will be your first signs representing more than one consonant.  The phonetic values (if any) are indicated after the meaning as a determinative, in larger type.

 

Hieratic	Meaning	Hieroglyph		Hieratic	Meaning	Hieroglyph
**	man, person				town, city
	talk, eat				singular *
	strike, force, effort				plural
	praise, worship				abstract
	walk, run				writing sS
	small, weak evil				star dwA
	wood				house, building pr
	sky, heaven pt				god nTr
	irrigated land				boat, ship
	foreign country desert				sun, day, time
	eye, see ir				ear, hearing sDm
***	woman				child
				****	negative

 
* This sign is used after another to indicate that the first sign is to be read as an ideogram, that is, as the object the sign is a picture of.

** When there is a need to fit this sign into a small space, it is reduced to .

*** When this sign is fitted into a small space, it is reduced to .

**** The dot on top of this sign was sometimes quite small, leading to confusion with  "n"
 
Reading Hieratic does take practice of course, and most especially since some signs are rather easily confused.  You can use Exercise 2A and Exercise 2B to help you become familiar with some of the signs.   Then you can try your hand at reading some simple sentences in Exercise 2C.

 

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Lesson 1

Lesson 3