10-09-2016, 06:45 PM
There's definitely a process of some kind whereby an extra letter has been tacked on to the beginnings of lines, at least most of the time. I have not been able to figure out what purpose this letter serves or even to describe this process fully, but it seems that the scribe had some idea of which letter he wants at the beginning of the line, yet the extra letter must also depend on the first word since it appears certain combinations are not allowed. Sometimes words at the beginnings of lines do not appear to have an extra letter, which may mean that the letter of the first word was already "good enough" (for this unknown purpose).
I tend to think that this is basically something non-linguistic/non-phonetic and that the added letter serves some purpose secondary to the meaning of the rest of the text, like an "annotation" of some kind. Probably we should just remove the extra letter in order to read the first word.
I tend to think that this is basically something non-linguistic/non-phonetic and that the added letter serves some purpose secondary to the meaning of the rest of the text, like an "annotation" of some kind. Probably we should just remove the extra letter in order to read the first word.