Scribes and elaborate gallows

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I believe these "ligatures" don't carry any meaning, they are just supposed to look fancy.  Have a look at a document in Latin written in similar style:

Note that the fancy ascenders in that image are not consistent: sometimes different letters have the same ascender, sometimes the same letter gets different fancy ascenders.  And there are several instances of "bridging ascenders", even jumping over 2-3 normal letters.  

That example should make one wonder whether there is any point in computing and interpreting statistics of puffs...

All the best, --stolfi