What was demotic writing in Ancient Egypt? (it appears that it went chronologically from Hieroglyphic to Hieratic to demotic historically through time

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Demotic was a cursive, rapid script used in ancient Egypt from the 7th century BCE to the 5th century CE for daily, administrative, and legal purposes. Derived from hieratic, it represents a "popular" form of writing, as opposed to formal hieroglyphs, and is famously one of the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone. 

• Definition & Origin: The term "Demotic" comes from the Greek demotikos (relating to the people). It emerged during the Late Period as a further simplification of the hieratic script, which was used for writing with ink on papyrus or ostraca.
• Usage: It was primarily used for legal documents, business contracts, personal letters, and eventually for literature, science, and religious texts.
• Distinction: While hieroglyphs were used for, e.g., monumental inscriptions, and hieratic for formal/religious texts, Demotic was the everyday script for the native population.
• Timeline: It was used throughout the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (roughly 650 BCE–450 CE).
• Decipherment: The Demotic script was crucial in the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with researchers like Thomas Young using the bilingual text on the Rosetta Stone to understand it. 

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Demotic was written almost exclusively from right to left. It is distinct from the later "Demotic Greek" language, which is a modern, spoken form of Greek. 

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