Fonts in the Epigraphic and Manuscript traditions of Roman Antiquity: Guest post by Olena Mudalige

Hello, I am Olena Mudalige. I am a second-year PhD candidate at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, studying Design. I previously completed a master’s degree studying art criticism and graphic practices and have qualified as an art critic and lecturer. I have come to the UK under the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ programme after leaving Ukraine on February 24 2022 and have become affiliated with the CREWS project through the European Research Area for Ukraine (ERA4Ukraine), https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/ukraine scheme. I’m currently interested in the origins and early forms of writing and in the history of study of writing in the ancient world. Today I want to write a bit about different graphical traditions in Roman writing.

The small number of surviving Latin inscriptions is explained by the fact that they were applied to marble only in the second half of the 1st C. BC. Prior to this, inscriptions were applied to tuff and limestone, which were prone to erosion from wind and rain. Inscriptions were erected on public buildings, triumphal arches, columns, tombstones. They were a reflection of the cultural aspects of the history of Roman society and a means of public and solemn representation of the Roman Empire in a vast territory from the British Isles to Egypt, from Gibraltar to the deep regions of Asia.

The widespread use of writing in ancient Rome, the high percentage of the population which was literate, the growth of libraries, the opening of enterprises for correspondence and distribution of books, public readings – all this contributed to the development of the art of beautiful writing and the emergence of the profession of ‘font master’.

The CREWS inscription advent calendar 2018

Following the success of last year’s Inscription Advent Calendar, which we ran on Twitter, we have decided to do it all over again, but with a set of new inscriptions (well, very old inscriptions, but you know what I mean).

A clay and copper cuneiform tablet, with a lion to guard them, collectively a foundation deposit of the city of Urkish (mod. Syria), c.2000 BC (Louvre) – the oldest surviving text(s) in the Hurrian language. #inscriptionadventcalendar #AdventCalendar https://t.co/X2N2Hu4FOe pic.twitter.com/QMk2LjsQwi

— CREWS Project (@crewsproject) December 6, 2018

You can follow the advent calendar by following us on Twitter, or by checking the blog regularly – our Twitter feed appears down the right-hand side of the page.

CREWS Display: A Cypriot Seal with a Fish-man

We have finally come to the last object in our special display at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Don’t be too sad yet though, because there is still more than a month to come and see it (until 10th June 2018) if you have a chance to visit Cambridge.

This week’s object is a little stamp seal from ancient Cyprus, featuring a fish-man with Cypriot Syllabic writing behind him to the top-left, probably 7th-6th C BC. At just 2.1 x 1.2 cm, it’s the second smallest item of our set. Now part of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s own collection, we do not know exactly where it came from but its Cypriot provenance can be confirmed because of its Cypriot Syllabic inscription.

CREWS Display: A Phoenician Arrowhead

Today in our survey of the objects in the CREWS exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, we’re looking at this bronze Phoenician arrowhead, on loan from the British Museum.

CREWS Display: A Cypriot Figurine with a Greek Alphabetic Inscription

Our next object, from our special CREWS-themed display at the Fitzwilliam Museum, has a privileged position in the Cypriot gallery: standing in its own cabinet in the centre of the room. At first glance, you wouldn’t guess why this Cypriot statuette is included in an exhibition about writing, but if you move around it, you may see that it has some scratches on the back side.

Although it would seem that these are random damage to the stone, they conceal a votive inscription written in the Greek alphabet. This is the perfect excuse to talk about the presence of the Greek alphabet in Cyprus and also about how epigraphists work with problematic inscriptions like this one to untangle the text behind them.

CREWS Display: A Tiny Cretan Hieroglyphic Seal Stone

This week we are having a closer look at the smallest object in our special CREWS-themed display at the Fitzwilliam Museum, a tiny seal stone made of green jasper and featuring signs of the Cretan Hieroglyphic script. At just 1.4 by 1.1 cm, and dating to the 19th-17th centuries BC, it is a minute but fascinating testament to the earliest writing system attested in ancient Crete.

CREWS Display: A Bilingual Mummy Label

The next item in our CREWS display series takes us back to Roman Egypt, where the co-existence of different languages had important ramifications for writing.

This is mummy label, and hails from between the first century BC and the early third century AD. It is a bilingual, with Greek on one side, and Egyptian Demotic on the other.

CREWS Display: Replica Ugaritic Tablet

This week in our look through the objects in the CREWS exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, we’re shining the spotlight on one of our replicas, this Ugaritic tablet I made last summer. There are lots of reasons why we’ve included replica items in the exhibition. Partly it lets us show off writing systems for which genuine ancient examples are hard to come by and which we wouldn’t otherwise be able to include. But they also have an important research role.

CREWS Display: Par(a)menon’s Tombstone

Pippa has already told us about the decipherment of the Cypriot syllabaries. With the next item of our display at the Fitzwilliam museum, I have the opportunity to outline how they were used to write in the Greek language.

This is an inscription engraved on a stone that indicates the burial of a man. It was found in Marion (in the north west of the island) and dated around the 5^th – 4^th centuries BC.

CREWS Display: A Babylonian Tablet

For the third of our posts looking at the objects in the CREWS Display at the Fitzwilliam Museum, we’re going to turn our attention to probably the oldest item we have on display: this cuneiform tablet.