The Demotic script is an abbreviated development of hieratic; like hieratic, it was written exclusively from right to left. The script in early Demotic texts can often be transcribed into the hieratic from which the Demotic developed (e.g., ... < ... < ... rsy 'south'). But by the Ptolemaic period the Demotic script was developing on its own, and the attempt to assign hieratic, and from the hieratic hieroglyphic, equivalents of words produces numerous artificial hieratic and hieroglyphic forms. Thus these lessons concentrate on the Demotic script itself, rather than on any real or hypothetical origin or contemporary hieroglyphic equivalent.