Demotic is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek.
Demotic script on a Rosetta Stone replica
Ostracon with Demotic inscription. Ptolemaic Kingdom, c. 305–30 BC. Probably from Thebes. It is a prayer to the god Amun to heal a man's blindness.
Contract in Demotic writing, with signature of a witness on the verso. Papyrus, Ptolemaic era.
Hieratic is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus.
One of four official letters to vizier Khay copied onto fragments of limestone, an ostracon
An exercise tablet with a hieratic excerpt from The Instructions of Amenemhat (dated to the eighteenth dynasty reign of Amenhotep I, c. 1514–1493 BC) reads: "Be on your guard against all who are subordinate to you... Trust no brother, know no friend, make no intimates."