The Esoteric Wordsmyth
Boustrophedon
Boustrophedon pronounced \boo-struh-FEE-dahn\ From the Greek βουστροφηδόν ‘ox-turning’ — that is, turning like oxen in ploughing), is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern English, or right-to-left as in Hebrew and Arabic, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored.
The name ‘boustrophedon’ is taken from the Greek language. Its etymology is from βούς—bous, ‘ox’ + στρέφειν—strephein, ‘to turn’ (cf. strophe), because the hand of the writer goes back and forth like an ox drawing a plough across a field and turning at the end of each row to return in the opposite direction (i.e., ‘as the ox ploughs’). It was a common way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece.
‘Some writing systems, like the ancient Greeks' boustrophedon, in which alternate lines are read in opposite directions, appear to actually support these pre-literary inclinations.’
From an article in The Economist (U.S. Edition), July 10, 2010
Before the standardization of writing from left to right, ancient Greek inscribers once used a style called ‘boustrophedon,’ a word meaning literally ‘turning like oxen in plowing.’ When they came to the end of a line, the ancient Greeks simply started the next line immediately below the last letter, writing the letters and words in the opposite direction, and thus following the analogy of oxen plowing left to right, then right to left. ‘Reverse boustrophedon’ writing has also been found in which the inscribers turned the document 180 degrees before starting a new line so that the words are always read left to right with every half turn.
NR
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