New Tear-Away Sheets

I finally got it all together to make tear-aways. I downloaded some very cool ancient fonts from the internet. I am working with a few right now....Avestan, Syriac, Ugaritic, and Venetic. I used an ancient love letter from Mesopotamia as the base and coverted it into each of the languages.

Avestan (second from the right) was an eastern Iranian language used around 1500 BC. It was used to compose the sacred hymns and canons on the area. It's a very beautiful script.

Syriac (far left) script appeared in the ancient Fertile Crescent around the 1st century CE. It became the vehicle of Christianity and culture, spreading throughout Asia and Eastern China.

Ugaritic script (the two in the middle) was a cuneiform alphabet. Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provided the first evidence of the "modern" ordering of letters and eventually gave the order of letters in the Greek and Roman alphabet. This was also from around 1500 BC. I brought back a replica of a cuniform clay tablet from the Louvre. It was initially very utilitarian in that they recorded the sale of land and other property.

The Venetics (far right..the most roman script) inhabited the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea during the Iron Age, roughly from 1000 BCE until domination by the Roman Empire. Known as Veneti to the Romans they gave their name to the region of Veneto and also to the city of Venice.

That's your history lesson for the day. I'm off to use my new tear-aways.