When ideas of writing spread

People often talk about writing systems as if we can trace them genetically back to a source - for instance, you will see lots of suggestions that all modern alphabets can ultimately be traced back to Egyptian hieroglyphs. But that glosses over rather a lot of details of how writing systems were transmitted from one …

Epigraphic mistakes or visual jokes?

I was just musing on the issue of apparent mistakes in inscriptions. What prompted it was a Twitter thread on this delightful Roman inscription from the Baths of Diocletian, commemorating an eye doctor called C. Terentius Pisto and his wife. As you can see, both the stone and the inscription are extremely wonky! Altar commemorating …