What is hieratic?

Hieratic is like having a special secret language that only certain people know, and it helps them do their jobs faster.

Imagine you're in a big kitchen with lots of chefs. Each chef has their own way of writing down the recipes they use, but one day, someone comes up with a quicker, easier version of those recipes. That’s like hieratic, it's a simpler, faster way to write that people who work closely with numbers or symbols can understand and use quickly.

Think about how you write your name. You might draw it in cursive, but if you're writing really fast, you might make some letters look squashed or joined together. That’s like hieratic, instead of using the full, fancy symbols, people used simpler shapes to write faster.

People who used hieratic were often scribes or accountants, they needed to keep track of things like food, money, and time. By using this quick writing style, they could finish their work much faster than if they wrote everything out in full.