Re: boustrophedon (was: Atlantis II)

At 1:44 pm +0000 16/6/01, kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:
>Two points that might be relevent.
>
>1. As you go from the R>L Semitic alphabets to the L>R European alphabets
>all the letter forms flip over to their mirror images. That is the shapes
>are defined relative to the direction of writing.
Yes, that's exactly what the Greeks did and they were responsible for the
flipping over  ;)

The earliest alphabetic Greek inscriptions (as opposed to the Linear B
syllabary & the later Cypriote syllabary) of the 8th cent. BC are purely
R>L in the Semitic fashions; but boustrophendon was adopted early on,
whereby after writing the opening line R>L, they turned turned round and
the second line went L>R and thus all further odd numbered lines were R>L
and even numbered L>R.  As John pointed out, the letters were reversed as
they "came back", so to speak, on the second line, i.e. the letters were
flipped over to their mirror images.

When, later, they gave up boustrophedon and wrote exclusively L>R it was
only natural that they continued using the flipped over images of the even
numbered (L>R) lines.

It was probably to faciltate the flipping over in the boustrophedon style
that the Greeks developed such symmatrical forms so many of their letters
(the lower case forms, of course, are medieval developments, just as they
were with the Roman script).

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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