Ancient Egyptian form of writing?

Ancient Egyptians devised one of the earliest forms of writing, known as "hieroglyphic" writing. It was a rather complex form of symbols, some standing for consonants/syllables and others for whole ideas, or determinatives. These symbols could be read either left or right, and they were frequently written starting upwards in columns. Either way, the direction the glyphs were facing determined the beginning of the thought. This process of writing was, naturally, tedious and very time-consuming, so later scribes created a simpler, "cursive" form of hieroglyphs called the "hieratic" script. Even later, during the Nubian period, this form of writing was simplified even further - "demotic". Determinatives were dropped, and writing was unintelligible to anyone used to hieroglyphs or hieratic.