ArtFire

The reversible bronze box bead on this necklace features Etruscan script on one side and Meroitic script on the other. It is 1 1/4 inches long and 1 inch wide at the widest point. The pendant hangs from a 1 mm metallic leather cord embellished with beads made in Africa from recycled glass. The cord is approximately 18 inches long including the wire wrapped bronze S-clasp.

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.

The Etruscan alphabet, which originated in what is now northern Italy around 700 BC, was derived from a form of the ancient Greek alphabet and eventually developed through Latin into the English alphabet we use today. Despite the fact that Etruscan can be "read" since the alphabet and pronunciations are known, only a few hundred words can be understood. Most of the surviving examples are in the form of inscriptions, such as tombstones, and consist largely of names of people and places.

I-173

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 beads