Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985

Cursive hieroglyphs, or hieroglyphic book hand, are a form of Egyptian hieroglyphs commonly used for handwritten religious documents, such as the Book of the Dead.[1] This style of writing was typically written with ink and a reed brush on papyrus, wood, or leather.[1] It was particularly common during the Ramesside Period, and many famous documents, such as the Papyrus of Ani, use it. It was also employed on wood for religious literature such as the Coffin Texts.
Cursive hieroglyphs should not be confused with the truly cursive form of hieroglyphs known as hieratic. Hieratic has many ligatures and signs unique to itself. However, there is a certain degree of influence from hieratic in the visual appearance of some signs. One significant difference is that the orientation of cursive hieroglyphs is not constant, reading right to left or left to right depending on the context, whereas hieratic is always read right to left.[2] A right-to-left reading direction is also most common in the writing of cursive hieroglyphs, but they are usually arranged in columns rather than rows.[1] The differences between cursive hieroglyphs and hieratic only became apparent after the end of the Old Kingdom, beginning with the First Intermediate Period. From this point, cursive hieroglyphs were mainly only used in sacralised contexts.[3]
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Cursive hieroglyphs, or hieroglyphic book hand, are a form of Egyptian hieroglyphs commonly used for handwritten religious documents, such as the Book of the Dead. This style of writing was typically written with ink and a reed brush on papyrus, wood, or leather. It was particularly common during the Ramesside Period, and many famous documents, such as the Papyrus of Ani, use it. It was also employed on wood for religious literature such as the Coffin Texts. Cursive hieroglyphs should not be confused with the truly cursive form of hieroglyphs known as hieratic. Hieratic has many ligatures and signs unique to itself. However, there is a certain degree of influence from hieratic in the visual appearance of some signs. One significant difference is that the orientation of cursive hieroglyphs is not constant, reading right to left or left to right depending on the context, whereas hieratic is always read right to left. A right-to-left reading direction is also most common in the writing of cursive hieroglyphs, but they are usually arranged in columns rather than rows. The differences between cursive hieroglyphs and hieratic only became apparent after the end of the Old Kingdom, beginning with the First Intermediate Period. From this point, cursive hieroglyphs were mainly only used in sacralised contexts.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs (, HY-roh-glifs) or hieroglyphics were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts that descended from Phoenician, the majority of the world's living writing systems are descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs—most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts through Greek, and the Arabic and Brahmic scripts through Aramaic. Hieroglyphs are thought to be one of four writing systems developed without outside influence, the others being cuneiform, Chinese characters, and Mayan script. The use of hieroglyphic writing derived from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age c. the 33rd century BC (Naqada III), with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the 28th century BC (Second Dynasty). Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system used about 900 distinct signs. The use of this writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, extending into the 4th century AD. During the 5th century, the permanent closing of pagan temples across Roman Egypt resulted in the loss of fluent readers and writers (called scribes) in hieroglyphs. Despite attempts at decipherment, the nature of the script remained unknown throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Regardless, mixture of medieval Arab (pre-Islamic) and Egyptian people kept the fascination of hieroglyphics alive. Scholars, spiritualists and treasure hunters collected highly sought-after artifacts in attempts to decode the language based on the phonetic and alphabetical similarities between Coptic and Hieroglyphs. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone. The entire Ancient Egyptian corpus, including both hieroglyphic and hieratic texts, is approximately 5 million words in length; if counting duplicates (such as the Book of the Dead and the Coffin Texts) as separate, this figure is closer to 10 million. The most complete compendium of Ancient Egyptian, the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, contains 1.5–1.7 million words.
Hieratic (; Ancient Greek: ἱερατικά, romanized: hieratiká, lit. 'priestly') 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. Hieratic should not be confused with cursive hieroglyphs. The two were indistinct during the Old Kingdom but separated into different writing systems during the First Intermediate Period.
The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript in the form of a scroll with cursive hieroglyphs and colour illustrations that was created c. 1250 BCE, during the Nineteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the Book of Going Forth by Day, more commonly known as the Book of the Dead, typically containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in their afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani; it is now in the British Museum. The scroll was discovered in the tomb of Ani in Thebes in 1888 by Egyptians trading in illegal antiquities. It was acquired by E. A. Wallis Budge, as described in his autobiography By Nile and Tigris. Shortly after Budge first saw the papyrus, Egyptian police arrested several antiquities dealers and sealed up their houses, one of which contained the objects Budge had purchased from the dealers. Budge distracted the guards by offering them a meal while locals tunnelled under the house's walls to retrieve the objects, including the Papyrus of Ani. Stored in several custom tin boxes, the papyrus and other objects Budge had acquired were then smuggled to the principal librarian at the British Museum. Budge was afterward paid a 150GBP "gratuity" from the British Treasury on behalf of the British Museum for acquiring the papyrus. It is considered to be the finest extant example of the Book of the Dead.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker