The Ancestor of S?

 

THE ANCETOR OF S 

The theme for the rest of this month is the letter S

This is from the #Egyptian #Hieratic #script and it is one of the ancestors if not the ancestor or prototype or source of our modern letter S. Looking over Egyptian hieroglyphs and their hieratic forms I can see several candidates for S, all signs representing words that start with s or sh.

But how can this have become S?

Somehow over the centuries as the first Alphabets developed the letter forms altered rotating sideways and becoming less angular.

More on this next time.

Martin of Tours and Carolingian Script

 #Stmartin #martinmas #carolingianscript 

Today is Martinmas November the 11th also Remembrance Day in several countries.

Now Martin of Tours was a Roman Soldier who became Bishop of Tours and one of the most famous examples of Carolingian Script is a manuscript with the biography of this saint written by Gregory of Tours. 

Excellent crisp letter forms of ink on parchment not paper showing why so called half uncial scripts were popular for so many centuries in Western Europe and still influence font design today.

Very obviously handwritten and not printed though with the spacing between words and letters and the size changing here and there as if the scribe hestitated thinking about how to fit the text onto the page.

Compare this to a Carolingian based font and consider the advantages of typography via a computer to the calligraghy of a scribe. 

Yet which was more personality or beauty ?

Some Coptic Calligraphy

Its Sunday in my timezone #Script #copticscript #copticcalligraphy

Some calligraphy using a script derived from Greek to admire.

Examples of Aramaic and Syriac writing

#aramaic #syriac #scripts #dialects

Script is mutable. Writing and language changes.