Re: notelangs

And to further add, there are no such things as celtic runes. The closest
you get is the Welsh coelbren, but they were a victorian druid renaissance
invention. Runes were Norse. The celts had ogham, which were almost always
carved into the sides of stones - if they were used on wood (which evidence
remains only in Roman writings about the druids), they weren't scratched so
much as carved, but at any rate, they weren't runes.

Aidan


At 06:36 PM 1/22/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Nokta Kanto writes:
>  >                                          Cuneiform was scratched into
>  > wet clay, and celtic runes were carved into wood; both are composed of
>  > entirely straight lines for that reason.
>
>Just to be precise - cuneiform was not, in general, *scratched* in wet
>clay, but rather pressed.  That's why they're wedge-shaped (cuneiform)
>- the stylus had a wedge-shaped cross-section.  It's because any kind
>of scratching is difficult to do in wet clay that cuneiform scripts
>were so popular.  Wedge-shaped strokes aren't really very practical in
>any other medium, which is why there aren't any cuneiform scripts
>around now.  (I'm sure this is an oversimplification, but I think it's
>basically correct.)