What a lovely example of old script. If you had asked me to guess, just from glancing at it, I would have guessed the first part was Polish written in Latin characters (not the second part, which obviously is Cyrillic).
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This will take some study.
In medieval Latin (which was used for Latin, French, German, Italian, Czech, English, etc.), a tail on a letter (e.g., shapes like EVA-r, EVA-s, daiin) almost always represented an abbreviation or ligature (or both). In subsequent scripts, after typesetting was invented, Latin abbreviations and ligatures began to fade from use and the tails on letters often became nothing more than calligraphic embellishments.
So... one has to become familiar with the script of the time or to be able to read the specific language to figure out if the tail represents letters or if it is an artistic choice. Unfortunately, I have to run and can't look at this example until this evening. :-(
Mesoamericans used pictograms. Spanish missionaries taught them Latin script.
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This will take some study.
In medieval Latin (which was used for Latin, French, German, Italian, Czech, English, etc.), a tail on a letter (e.g., shapes like EVA-r, EVA-s, daiin) almost always represented an abbreviation or ligature (or both). In subsequent scripts, after typesetting was invented, Latin abbreviations and ligatures began to fade from use and the tails on letters often became nothing more than calligraphic embellishments.
So... one has to become familiar with the script of the time or to be able to read the specific language to figure out if the tail represents letters or if it is an artistic choice. Unfortunately, I have to run and can't look at this example until this evening. :-(
Quote:Well, some people argue them being native to Mesoamerica, so you see there's room for discussion.
Mesoamericans used pictograms. Spanish missionaries taught them Latin script.