Re: boustrophedon (was: Atlantis II)

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:

> At 11:04 pm -0400 14/6/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, John Cowan wrote:
> >
> >> Danny Wier scripsit:
> >>
> >> > | 4) It is read zig-zag, 1st line is Left to Right, 2nd line is read
> >>Right to
> >> > Left, 3rd line is Left to Right, 4th line is Right to left and so on....
> >> >
> >> > Boustrophedon.
>
> _Reverse_ boustrophedon - as the original boustrophedon practised by those
> ancient Greeks (always AFAIK) began with 1st line Right-to-Left and thus
> with all the odd numbered lines; the even numbered went Left-to-Right.
>
> >> Strictly speaking, it is only boustrophedon if the letters on the RTL lines
> >> are mirror images of the ones on the LTR lines.
>
> Quite so.
>
> >Huh.  It was either in some book on the history of writing (mainly
> >methods of, like pens and paper and papyrus and stuff) or _The Cambridge
> >Encyclopedia of Language_ (2nd ed., David Crystal), and I'm sorry I can't
> >remember which, that it said there were several kinds of boustrophedon,
> >of which the definition you give was only one.
>
> Ah, I suspect John lke me thinks that because the Greeks coined the word
> then it means what they meant by it, i.e. as defined above.
:-p  I suspect that ignorant people like me, and whoever wrote that
entry, figured that since it's such a handy term, why not generalize?

> In ancient Greek BTW _boustrophe:do'n_ was an adverb meaning "ploughwise"
> ("plowwise"?) << bou- (ox) + stroph- (turn); but the adverb was
> particularly use of the archaic style of writing.
>
> Maybe the other 'ploughwise' types of writing to which Yoon Ha refers could
> be termed "boustrophedoid"  ;)
>
> What are these boustrophedoid scripts?
Yes--having been enlightened, I'm perfectly happy to use "boustrophedoid"
instead.  :-)

I forget the complete lineup, but it included back-and-forth with
rotations, back-and-forth with the letters retaining the same orientation
all through, etc.  I *think* there were examples of each, but I can't
remember what.  If I ever unearth the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
(sorry, have been in moving-out process for the past couple weeks and 99%
of my books-in-Ithaca are sitting in boxes in my fiance's parents'
garage) I'll check.

YHL

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