See HIEROGLYPHICS.
HIERODULI, The.
In some of the early Greek communities, the Hieroduli, or
ministers of the gods, "formed a class of persons bound to
certain services, duties, or contributions to the temple of
some god, and … sometimes dwelt in the position of serfs on
the sacred ground. They appear in considerable numbers, and as
an integral part of the population only in Asia, as, e. g., at
Comana in Cappadocia, where in Strabo's time there were more
than 6,000 of them attached to the temple of the goddess Ma,
who was named by the Greeks Enyo, and by the Romans Bellona.
In Sicily too the Erycinian Aphrodite had numerous ministers,
whom Cicero calls Venerii, and classes with the ministers of
Mars (Martiales) at Larinum in South Italy. In Greece we may
consider the Craugallidæ as Hieroduli of the Delphian Apollo.
They belonged apparently to the race of Dryopes, who are said
to have been at some former time conquered by Heracles, and
dedicated by him to the god. The greater part of them, we are
told, were sent at the command of Apollo to the Peloponnese,
whilst the Craugallidæ remained behind. … At Corinth too
there were numerous Hieroduli attached to Aphrodite, some of
whom were women, who lived as Hetæræ and paid a certain tax
from their earnings to the goddess."
_G. Schömann,
Antiquities of Greece: The State,
part 2, chapter 4._
See, also, DORIS AND DRYOPIS.
HIEROGLYPHICS, Egyptian.
"The Greeks gave the name of Hieroglyphics, that is, 'Sacred
Sculpture,' to the national writing of the Egyptians, composed
entirely of pictures of natural objects. Although very
inapplicable, this name has been adopted by modern writers,
and has been so completely accepted and used that it cannot
now be replaced by a more appropriate appellation. … For a
long series of ages the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, for
which the classical writers furnish no assistance, remained a
hopeless mystery. The acute genius of a Frenchman at last
succeeded, not fifty years since, in lifting the veil. By a
prodigious effort of induction, and almost divination, Jean
François Champollion, who was born at Figeac (Lot) on the 23d
of December, 1790, and died at Paris on the 4th of March,
1832, made the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century in
the domain of historical science, and succeeded in fixing on a
solid basis the principle of reading hieroglyphics. Numerous
scholars have followed the path opened by him. … It would
… be very far from the truth to regard hieroglyphics as
always, or even generally, symbolical. No doubt there are
symbolical characters among them, generally easy to
understand; as also there are, and in very great number,
figurative characters directly representing the object to be
designated; but the majority of the signs found in every
hieroglyphic text are characters purely phonetic; that is,
representing either syllables (and these are so varied as to
offer sometimes serious difficulties) or the letters of an
only moderately complicated alphabet. These letters are also
pictures of objects, but of objects or animals whose Egyptian
name commenced with the letter in question, while also the
syllabic characters (true rebusses) represented objects
designated by that syllable."
_F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier.
Manual of the Ancient History of the East,
book 3, chapter 5 (volume 1)._
"The system of writing employed by the people called Egyptians
was probably entirely pictorial either at the time when they
first arrived in Egypt, or during the time that they still
lived in their original home. We, however, know of no
inscription in which pictorial characters alone are used, for
the earliest specimens of their writing known to us contain
alphabetical characters. The Egyptians had three kinds of
writing—Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic. …
Hieroglyphics … were commonly employed for inscriptions upon
temples, tombs, coffins, statues, and stelæ, and many copies
of the Book of the Dead were written in them. The earliest
hieroglyphic inscription at present known is found on the
monument of Shera, parts of which are preserved in the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and in the Gîzeh Museum; it dates
from the IInd dynasty. Hieroglyphics were used in Egypt for
writing the names of Roman Emperors and for religious purposes
until the third century after Christ, at least.
{1646}
Hieratic … was a style of cursive writing much used by the
priests in copying literary compositions on papyrus; during
the XIth or XIIth dynasty wooden coffins were inscribed in
hieratic with religious texts. The oldest document in hieratic
is the famous Prisse papyrus, which records the counsels of
Ptah-hetep to his son; the composition itself is about a
thousand years older than this papyrus, which was probably
inscribed about the XIth dynasty. Drafts of inscriptions were
written upon flakes of calcareous stone in hieratic, and at a
comparatively early date hieratic was used in writing copies
of the Book of the Dead. Hieratic was used until about the
fourth century after Christ. Demotic … is a purely
conventional modification of hieratic characters, which
preserve little of their original form, and was used for
social and business purposes; in the early days of Egyptian
decipherment it was called enchorial. … The Demotic writing
appears to have come into use about B. C. 900, and it survived
until about the fourth century after Christ. In the time of
the Ptolemies three kinds of writing were inscribed side by
side upon documents of public importance, hieroglyphic, Greek,
and Demotic; examples are the stele of Canopus, set up in the
ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy III. Euergetes I., B. C.
247-222, at Canopus, to record the benefits which this king
had conferred upon his country, and the famous Rosetta Stone,
set up at Rosetta in the eighth year of the reign of Ptolemy
V. Epiphanes (B. C. 205-182), likewise to commemorate the
benefits conferred upon Egypt by himself and his family, etc.
… A century or two after the Christian era Greek had
obtained such a hold upon the inhabitants of Egypt, that the
native Christian population, the disciples and followers of
Saint Mark, were obliged to use the Greek alphabet to write
down the Egyptian, that is to say Coptic, translation of the
books of the Old and New Testaments, but they borrowed six
signs from the demotic forms of ancient Egyptian characters to
express the sounds which they found unrepresented in Greek."
_E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Mummy,
pages 353-354._
See, also, ROSETTA STONE.
HIEROGLYPHICS, Mexican (so-called).
See AZTEC AND MAYA PICTURE-WRITING.
HIERONYMITES, The.
"A number of solitaries residing among the mountains of Spain,
Portugal, and Italy, gradually formed into a community, and
called themselves Hieronymites, either because they had
compiled their Rule from the writings of St. Jerome, or
because, adopting the rule of St. Augustine, they had taken
St. Jerome for their patron. … The community was approved by
Gregory XI., in 1374. The famous monastery of Our Lady of
Guadaloupe, in Estremadura; the magnificent Escurial, with its
wealth of literary treasures, and the monastery of St. Just,
where Charles V. sought an asylum in the decline of his life,
attest their wonderful energy and zeal."
_J. Alzog,
Manual of Universal Church History,
volume 3, page 149._
HIGH CHURCH AND LOW CHURCH:
First use of the names.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (APRIL-AUGUST).