Some Ancient Scripts Ian James © May-November 2009

These fonts were developed in response to finding so few nice representations of ancient scripts on the web. Many were poorly drawn, making them appear primitive and unsophisticated. Only after finding good ancient examples, does one appreciate how lovely the scripts really were, and how sophisticated was their heritage. These ones are all written right-to-left.

Avestan

The Avestan alphabet was developed to help preserve the Zoroastrian scriptures. It has an unusually large number of glyphs, with subtle phonemic distinctions. This chart (© May 2009) uses the traditional transcription; some glyphs are currently absent, marked in red.

An example using this font, text from the Avestan scripture, Yasna 45.I:

Meroitic

The Meroitic script is an alphabet originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroë (Kush). It first appears in the 2nd century BC. This chart (© November, 2009) uses a regularized font based on cursive text from a late period:

A sample of this Meroitic font using text from Lost Languages, Andrew Robinson, 2002 (and originally from The World’s Writing Systems, Daniels & Bright, 1996):

Samaritan

Samaritan was based on Phoenician and Old Hebrew. This font is © May 2009:

Extract from a Samaritan bible, using this font: