Methods, tools, and perspectives of hieratic palaeography

Having provided background information about the hieratic script, especially as regards its relations to other Egyptian scripts in terms of figurativity and spatiality as well as its diachronic development, this chapter focuses on two main questions. First, what paleographic tools are available for studying hieratic texts? The methods and future avenues for research in this area are discussed in relation to the different types of written variation that can be observed at the systemic, normative, and perfomative levels. Second, what are the fields of application of hieratic palaeography? From editing and publishing hieratic texts to dating compositions or recognizing individual scribes at work, hieratic palaeography is at the crossroads of many areas of research that are outlined in the second section of this chapter.
Crossing Boundaries