ArtFire

This necklace consists of three pendants hung from multiple 1mm and 1.5 mm leather cords embellished with African glass beads. There are greenheart beads,which came to Africa from Venice between the 17th and 19th centuries, small red clay beads, and beads made in Africa from recycled glass. The overall length of the necklace is approximately 19". The center pendant is 2 1/8" long and about 1" wide, the smaller ones are about 1 3/4" long and 3/4" wide. The pattern on the pendants and the handmade bronze cones and toggle clasp is Meroitic script.

Meroitic script developed in the Sudan in the third century BC. It has two forms, one hieroglyphic and one cursive, developed from the Egyptian systems. British Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith deciphered the phonetic values of both forms around 1911, but other than proper names only a few dozen words have been translated, based on context.

I-270

As I reached the pictures in the "New Scientist" article I knew I had stumbled on what I had been looking for. Bronze has a feeling of antiquity about it that seems suited to fragments of text, and I wanted to incorporate script into the pieces I was making, but in all the texts I was looking at the meaning had to be considered. Here were "Eight Scripts That Still Can't Be Read", and they were both enormously varied and visually intriguing. From the organic feel of Linear A to the impossible precision of Rongo-rongo, from the almost familiar pictures of Olmec, Proto-Elamite, and the Phaistos Disc to the abstract lines and squiggles of Meroitic, all were visually and intellectually engaging in a different way than known text could be. They say something, but they are more cultural artifact than simple text. Even if one turns out to be a warehouse inventory I won't be disappointed because their meaning goes beyond their translation. So here is my "Undeciphered Texts" collection.

bronze, leather, glass, clay beads