“Hieroglyphs could preserve their magical and mysterious nature only because the Egyptians invented a new and easier script for day-to-day use. Hieratic script was a simplified version of hieroglyphic writing, with the careful pictorial signs reduced to a few quickly dashed lines. . . . Hieratic script became the preferred handwriting for business matters. . . .

Sometime around 3000 BC, an Egyptian scribe realized that the papyrus used as a building material in Egyptian houses (reeds softened, laid out in crossed pattern, mashed into pulp, and then laid out to dry in thin sheets) could also serve as a writing surface. With a brush and ink, hieratic script could be laid down very rapidly on papyrus.”

—Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, 2007.