ancient writing systems

The Cuneiform Stylus: The Tool That Wrote the Word

The world's first writing system, cuneiform, owes its distinctive wedge-shaped appearance to a surprisingly simple tool. This post explores how…

3 weeks ago

The Geometry of God: Rules of Islamic Calligraphy

In Islamic art, the graceful curves of calligraphy are not a matter of artistic whim, but of sacred mathematics. This…

3 weeks ago

The Scribe’s Shortcut: A History of the Tilde (~)

That familiar squiggle, the tilde (~), is more than just a decoration on the Spanish 'ñ' or a casual emoji.…

3 weeks ago

The Scribe’s Mistake: Errors in Medieval Texts

Before the printing press, every book was a handmade original, and every scribe made mistakes. Far from being mere blemishes,…

3 weeks ago

Clay, Papyrus, Vellum: How Writing Surfaces Shaped Language

Before keyboards or even paper, the very material a scribe wrote on dictated our linguistic conventions. From the wedge-shaped efficiency…

3 weeks ago

The Invention of Silence: When Words Got Spaces

For centuries, Western texts were written as an unbroken wall of letters, a practice known as scriptio continua. The simple…

3 weeks ago

Vinča Symbols: Europe’s Oldest Writing?

Long before Egyptian hieroglyphs, a mysterious Neolithic culture in the Balkans etched thousands of symbols onto clay. These Vinča symbols…

3 weeks ago

The Georgian Alphabet’s Three Sisters

Georgia doesn't just have one unique alphabet—it has three. This trio of distinct but related scripts, known as Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri,…

3 weeks ago

Carved in Stone, Read on the Edge: Unlocking Ogham, Ireland’s Ancient Alphabet of Lines

Forget runes and hieroglyphs; journey to ancient Ireland to uncover Ogham, a script written not on a page but on…

3 weeks ago

The Mystery of Rongorongo: Easter Island’s Enigmatic Script

Rongorongo, the written script of the native Rapanui people of Easter Island, stands as one of the most intriguing and…

2 years ago

This website uses cookies.