hieratic

adj

1. (not-comparable)Of or pertaining to priests or other religious authorities, especially pharaonic priests of Ancient Egypt.

   “In sculpture and in the drama, in Aristophanic farce and in hieratic rituals, in pictorial art and in the stream of literature, the phallus is transcendent.”

   “The witch, repository of hieratic lore and folk legends and occult arcana, became the distributor of philtres and unguents, electuaries and pastilles, herbs and charms and incantations - directed toward sexual pleasures and amatory satisfactions.”

2. (not-comparable)Of or pertaining to the cursive writing system that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system as its ordinary handwritten counterpart.

   “The papyrus was written in hieratic, a cursive form of hieroglyphics.”

3. (not-comparable)Extremely stylized, restrained or formal; adhering to fixed types or methods; severe in emotional import.

   “Some of the more hieratic sculptures leave the viewer curiously unmoved.”

   “When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country, though the coincidence could hardly have impressed anyone then!”

   “They came in among earth-moving machines, a total absence of trees, the usual hieratic geometry, and eventually, shimmying for the sand roads, down in a helix to a sculptured body of water named Lake Inverarity.”

noun

1. (historical)A writing system used in pharaonic Egypt that was developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus, allowing scribes to write quickly without resorting to the time consuming hieroglyphs.