Justis Madrigal
Ancient & Medieval Scripts
Cuneiform
Summary account of silver for the governor written in Sumerian Cuneiform on a clay tablet. From Shuruppak, Iraq, circa 2500 BC. British Museum, London.
Denise Schmandt-Besserat - French Archeologist who discovered that the root of the Sumerian language stemmed from the clay tokens used for transactions.
Ideogram - A written character that symbolizes the idea of a thing without indicating the sound to pronounce it
Phonogram - phonograma are signs that stood for sounds in a persons name.
Rebus - A writing technique that uses pictographic homophones to create words and phrases.
Syllable - A unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound that is often combined with various consonant sounds, forming words.
Pictured Right: Our Jenny Holzer Truism.
The absence of some letters when translating, such as the absence of any "j" syllable, "w" sound, "f" syllable, as well as any "ects" sounds, made words like "objects" and "reject" not fully work. As a result, the truism is pronounced as:
ri ek (reject) a ke te ez (acquaintances) di ka (discard) ab ez (objects) za ge (forget) tu (truths).
The word "cunieform" (from the latin term cuneus) refers to writing in a clay tablet with the end of a stick as a wedge. Words, are made up of syllables. Syllables, represented by symbols, ideograms, and pictographs (described below), were carved into these clay tablets as a means of communication.
Key Concepts and Terms
Bulla - A clay envelope used to hold clay tokens until a deal or payment had been completed.
Code of Hammurabi - A collection of 282 laws from Ancient Babylonia, enacted by the Babylonian King Hammurabi c.1750 BCE. It is one of the oldest deciphered writings in the world.
Complex Tokens - Tokens appearing in mesopotamia around 4000 BCE and were used for about the next 800 years. They were considered complex because they were adorned with markings and had specialized holes in the center to allow them to be held on a string.
Cuneiform - The act of writing in clay with a stick.
Cylinder Seal - These were symbols that were pressed into a bulla to represent those invoved in a transaction.
Mesopotamia - The name for the area of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Mesopotamia means "the place between two rivers".
Pictogram - Picture that stands for an idea, word, or phrase.
Syllabary - A list or collection of syllables in a given language
Symbol - An image that represents something else without resembling it.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs & Hierotic Script
On the left is our truism "Reject aquaintances, discard objects, forget truths" using Hieroglyphs as phonograms.
Bottom left, is the same truism in Hieratic script phonograms. There are no sounds for "o" or "u" so we replaced them with the sound for "a".
Excerpt from the "Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus" (1500-1600 BC) http://www.taneter.org/writing.html
“No limit may be set to art, neither is there any craftsman that is fully master of his craft” The Instruction of Ptahhotep
Key Concepts and Terms
Acrophony - The use of the first sound of an image rather than the whole syllable.
Continuous Narrative - A story told without being broken into panels, scene goes from left to right and words are written in columns separated by lines.
Demotic - Late Egyptian writing that was derived from northern forms of hieratic use in the Nile Delta.
Book of the Dead - A book that was made to be buried with the king so that he could have a guide through the underworld into the afterlife.
Cursive - Writing with connected letters to improve writing speed.
Determanitives - A symbol added to a word, is not pronounced, but dictates the meaning of the word.
Glyph - A carved symbol that makes up part of a word.
Edwin Smith Papyrus - A Hieratic medical textbook containing methods for stitching, bandaging, among other things. These methods were inteded for use on the battlefield.
Hieratic - The less formal and more quickly written form of Egyptian hieroglyphs, somethinkg akin to cursive writing.
Manuscript - A word meaning "written by hand".
Hieroglyph - Sacred (Hiero) Carvings (Glyph), that can be read in any direction.
Historic - The time in history in which people used writing.
Paleograpoher - Someone who studies "Old Writing".
Pallete of Narmer - The earliest surviving "historic" artwork anywhere. It was a ceremonial pallette used to prepare and apply eye makeup.
Papyrus - A plant used by the Egyptians to make papyrus paper. The English word "paper" is derived from papyrus.
Phonic - Of or relating to speech sounds.
Rubricate - To make a word red for emphasis.
Rosetta Stone - A stone discovered in Egypt that helped decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs by translating them into Greek.
Scroll - A book made from one continouous sheet of paper, it is stored by being rolled up on itself.
Scribe - typically a son of a scribe, they are born into the profession and taught from a young age how to read and write. Scribes were also exempt from military service and taxes.
Stylus - A writing tool, with a sharp end for etching glyphs into a wax or clay tablet, and a flat end for erasing those marks.
Phoenician Abjad
Abjad - The name for an alphabet with no vowel sounds, just consonants.
Consonant - Glyphs that represent sounds that do not require air to be pushed through the lungs.
Phonics - Teaching people how to read by correlting sounds with letters.
Scripto Continua - Writing with no breaks between words, sentences, and paragraphs.
The style of the phoenician abjad is read right to left and contains only consonant sounds (hence the meaning of abjad). It is believed to have first appeared at around 1400 BCE and was used by the Canaanites. This abjad has only 22 characters, resulting in the truism above being shorter than the others shown on this page. The Phoenicians, whom lived in close proximity to the Canaanites, adopted this method and passed it on to the Greeks as a result of trade and general interaction, and then over time, made its way to the Etruscans and Romans. Problems with the abjad include: no letter for "J", so all J's were replaced with the "K" consonant from the abjad.
Sample text of Phoenician Abjad, Original photo by Özgür Mülazımoğlu , photo obtained from http://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=script_detail_use&key=Phnx
Greek (Athens) Monumental Alphabet
Kallias Decree (with text arranged in stoichedon), Greek, c. 440 BCE, Louvre Museum, Paris.
During the fifth century BCE, Athens had a highly militarized mentality about society, and this makes itself apparent in their writing, particularly in the Kallias Decree (pictured left). All the letters are arranged with equal spacing so that there are uniform lines of text. This neat and tidy way of writing is called "stoichedon", and it is meant to resemble military ranks of soldiers standing next to and in front of each other in equal lengths as they would in their battle formations. The Greek love of mathematics and order at this time is very apparent, this obsession also extended into how they wrote. In this case ,monoline, meaning "same line" (a uniform stroke) in which each letter and it's components were equal in stroke and height.
The truism on the bottom left was attemped to be written in stoichedon.
Aplhabet - A set of charachters or glyphs that contain vowels and consonants.
Bustrophedon - meaning "As the ox turns" a description of a particular form of writing in which lines alternate the direction in which they are written and read.
Kallias Decree - A decree that was carved in marble, demanding the return of money loaned out by the city so that it could finance the embellishment of the Acropolis.
Mantiklos Apollo - A votive statue from early Greece that was left as a gift to the god Apollo at a temple. The letters inscribed are meant to record the voice of Mantiklos, who left the statue, to speak to the god on behalf of Mantiklos when he wasn't present to do so himself.
Ostracized - To Exile or push from society. From Ostraca, small pieces of stone with writing scratched into them (one particular case involving ostraca being used to vote on the exile of a particular citizen.
Monoline - The original form of sans serif writing. Each stroke of a glyph is uniform in size and spacing.
Stiochedon - Meaning "Military files". Letters are read from left to right and arranged in rows and columns.
Vowel - A glyph that represents a sound that comes from air pushed through the lungs through the vocal chords unblocked
Greek Manuscript Uncial
Above is the Jenny Holzer truism in Greek Manuscript Uncial.
Uncial simply means "handwritten capital letters", as lower case letters weren't an established thing back in the times of the Greeks, and since everything was handwritten during these times, it can be said that all writing was uncial. Above is the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest known written bible. It is written in uncial, as well as on parchment, and indicates some sort of breaks between paragraphs/passages with the use of blank space. There are, however, no spaces or breaks between words or sentences, so scripto contnua is still at play here.
Codex - Meaning "Block of wood" and ancient precursor to books.
Codex Sinaticus - The earliest surviving, complete, copy of the bible.
Codify -To put in a codex, or to bring order.
Majuscule - Upper-case letters
Manuscript - Word meaning "Hand written".
Symposium - A greek drinking party with naked slaves who served food and played music or read literature.
Uncial - A script written entirely in captial letters.
Parchment - Early form of writing surface made from the processed skins of animals.
X-hieght - The distance between the baseline of a glyph and the tops of the median line (without ascenders or descenders). It is typically the height of the letter "x".
Roman Square Monumental Capitals
Inscription from the base of the Column of Trajan, Rome, c. 113 AD, Roman monumental capitals. https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/175/427714161_922c1910fe_b.jpg
Our modern day font, Times New Roman, is a derivative of this inscription. Trajan himself is buried underneath the base of the column.
Apollodorus of Damascus - Architecht who had 125 feet of the Quirinal hill for the sake of the Imperative Axial Symmetry of Trajan's forum.
Calamus Pen - A reed pen used for a variety of strokes similar to a brush. They are obtained from a specific reed that grows along the banks of rivers in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In order for the pens to be made properly, they must go through a 4 year long curing process in horse manure.
Column of Trajan - Architecht who had 125 feet of the Quirinal hill for the sake of the Imperative Axial Symmetry of Trajan's forum.
Golden Section - Rectangle whose side lengths are to the ratio 1:1.618
"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit" - "Captive Greece captured her uncultivated conqueror." In other words, the Romans loved all things Greek and adapted their traditions.
Optical Refinements - Changes in height, thickness, and/or space between shapes/text that fix optical distortions that would occur when looking at them from a particular angle. Ex: Inscription on the column of Trajan
Humanist - A person who wants to revive the ancient traditions of classical Greece and Rome.
Serif - The Dutch word for "stroke". It refers to the little "feet" added to the end of letter strokes.
Typographer - Someone who concerns themselves with the art and technique of arranging letterforms and glyphs to make written language, legible, and appealing.
Roman Rustic Capitals
Roman rustic capitals are named as such because they aren't as geometrical like the square capitals are, so they appear "rustic", worn down and with more variance. As such, Roman rustic capitals are more informal when compared to Roman square capitals.
Graffiti - Writings or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a surface in a public setting.
Pompeii - Ancient Roman town that was mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 meters of volcanic ash in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Old Roman Cursive ("Cursive Antigua")
Vindolanda - Roman fort just south of Hadrian's wall in northern England. In the 1970s, archaeologists found slivers of wood with handwriting there.
Invitation from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina, c. 100 CE, ink on wood (Tablet 291), from Vindolanda, Britain, Chesterholm Museum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets#/media/File:Vindolanda_tablet_291.jpg
Cursive was found most often in areas occupied/reserved for military forces, such as camps and forts. It's a quicker, less detailed way of writing that were primarily meant for letters. This method of writing was the least informal when compared to rustic and square capitals. This writing was also found in Egypt at a military base, so it is hypothesized by researches that soldiers were trained to write so they could communicate from far away (Egypt to Vindolanda, for example).
Claudia Severa - Wife of a commander for a nearby fort who wrote a birthday invitation on wood to her friend. This invitation is the earliest known Latin writing by a female.
Insular Half Uncial
The Lindisfarne gospels were exceptional for various reasons. The entirety of the completed gospels were believed to be written by a single man, Bishop Eadfrith from Lindisfarne. Also used was the first evidence of a lead point, a pencil. Intricate designs found on incipit pages (pictured above), as well as on carpet pages, were designed in part by a pencil, in which Eadfrith drew the design on the back of the page, and then inked in the design on the front of the page, as the design was seen through the parchment. Perhaps even more important, were the use of varying text elements and designs. We see use of word spacing in the incipit text, large serpent-like characters with fine patterns and abstract detail, as well as use of different letter style that echoed the appearance of runic glyphs and other characters. Because of this decorative and aesthetic approach that Eadfrith appeared to take when creating these pages, it is suggested that they weren't meant to be entirely legible, but rather a page that one would gawk at and bask in its detail and his skill.
Eadfrith of Lindisfarne (presumed author), detail of the "Preface to the Book of John" (folio 211r) from the Lindisfarne Gospel, tempera on parchment codex, c. 715, British Librabry. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_nero_d_iv_f211r
Abbreviation - The shortening of a word. Indicated in the Lindisfarne Gospel by a tilde.
Carpet Page - A page of mainly geometrical ornamentation typically placed at the beginning of each of the 4 gospels in gospel books.
Diminuendo - A technique of ordered hierarchy in which the decoration of letters gradually become simpler with each line.
Eadfrith - Believed to have created the Lindisfarne Gospel for two reasons: to augment the cult of Saint Cuthbert, and to bring stability and reconciliation among the various Christian factions throughout England.
Explicit - Stated clearly and in detail.
Gospel - An account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. There are 4 in total, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Half uncial - Features mostly miniscule with majuscule letterforms for N, R, and D, as well as spacing between words.
Header - A line/block of text that appears at the top of each page.
Incipit - Opening words of a text.
Initial Page - A page that precedes a book or pages of text.
Insular -
Justified Text - Left and right sides of text have a straight edge.
Ligature - Two letters combined to form one shape.
Lindisfarne - A place in Northern England right along the coast and on the border of Scotland.
Monastery - A building occupied by a community of monks living under religious vows.
Nomina Sacra - Divine names or titles.
Suspension - Omitting letters from a word.
Carolingian or "Caroline" Miniscule
Carolingian writing came about during Charlemagne's reign and was used widely throughout Europe due to his emphasis on education (A decision influenced by Alcuin of York). This script is particularly significant in that it introduced lower case lettering (minuscule).
Alcuin of York - A master of Charlemagne's Palace School. He specialized in the instruction of rhetoric, logic, and astronomy.
Caroline - Writing that used minuscule, and is where we get our lowercase letters.
Charlemagne - King of the Franks who later become king of Lombardy and the first holy Roman Emperor. He controlled all of Europe and emphasized reading.
Constantine I - Roman emperor from 306 to 337 AD who was the first emperor to legalize Christianity.
Harley Golden Gospels - Carolingian manuscript that is highly decorated and showed depictions of humans.
Iconoclasm - A call for the destruction of figurative or representational images in religious art.
Iconoclasm - A call for the destruction of figurative or representational images in religious art.
The Harley Golden Gospels, folio 1r, Aachen, Carolingian Empire, c. 800 - 825, 365 x 250 mm (British Library Harley Ms 2788) http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/02/all-that-glisters-is-not-gold-the-harley-golden-gospels.html
Justinian I - Depicted in a mosaic in the San Vitale. He was the last emperor to unite Europe through military force.
Miniscule - Lowercase lettering and alphabet.
Saint Jerome - Started to translate and correct the Latin version of the common Bible.
Scriptoria - A room that was mainly used as a space for copying manuscripts.
Textura (aka textualis, Gothic, Blackletter and Old English)
Gerard Brils, Latin Bible Manuscript, Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England, created in Belgium in 1407 CE.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bible.malmesbury.arp.jpg
Textura, also referred to as "Old English" and "Blackletter", came about during the exponential increase of demand for books throughout Europe since the establishment of universities in 1075. The bold and condensed lettering served to take up as little space as possible, due to parchment (the writing surface) being an expensive material.
Dialectical reasoning - To find truth through listening to arguments from opposing sides of the argument and testing their claims.
Historiated letter - An enlarged letter at the beginning of a paragraph or body of text that contains a picture.
Inhabited Initial - An enlarged letter containing the picture of a human or animal and is for decorative use only.
Minims - Angular feet found in Textura.
Scholaticism - Method of critical thinking that dominated teaching in European Universities from their origins to around 1700.
Textura - Word meaning "Woven pattern". A writing style that had thick angular strokes and were compact in order to take up minimal space.
Versal - An ornamental letter that begins a sectIion of text.
Batarde (aka Bastarda and Gothic Bastarda)
Batarde was reserved mainly for secular texts , such as Roman de la Rose pictured above, and texts in local languages. The writing used more negative space than textura, used ascenders and descenders, and was overall more legible than textura. It's name literally means "low-born", but that doesn't mean the texts it were written in were of any lower quality.
“Carolle in the Garden of Sir Mirth” from Roman de la Rose, Bruges, c. 1490-1500, British Library Manuscript Harley 4425, folio 14v:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Carolle_in_the_Garden_-_Roman_de_la_Rose_(c.1490-1500),_f.14v_-_BL_Harley_MS_4425.jpg
Batarde - Meaning "low-born". Used in secular texts and local languages. It featured ascenders and descenders that tapered to a point.
Burgundian Court - Refers to territory ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy, low countries and parts of modern day France and Germany.
Roman De La Rose - Secular literature that was a love poem written in the Old French language and by two authors. It served as a handbook of Medieval courtly love.