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In this paper, I will discuss the creative ways that individuals wove Demotic into traditional Hieroglyphic texts using a group of funerary stelae from the Ptolemaic cemeteries at Panopolis, modern Akhmim. These stelae created different visual experiences for audience members, dependent on their level of literacy. By drawing on both the textual and iconographic elements on the stelae, I will show that the individual agency of the person or family commissioning these memorials offered a means of innovating within the traditional realm of Egyptian religious representation. The updating of older features on these stelae with new approaches highlights the broader effect of changes to mortuary practice at this time, and the struggle to guarantee the religious efficacy of ancient rituals. Through this material, I will assess how individuals modified the visuality of both text and image on monuments of personal commemoration to accommodate new modes of interaction in the Hellenistic world.