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| Looking at the top third of the page gives us the general idea. Several factors enhance the difficulty of reading the script. One is that word spacing is somewhat erratic and many words just run together. Punctuation is minimal and consists only of a few strategically placed single dots. There are no question marks, although the passage contains questions, and no quotation marks, although there are quotes. Capital letters do not seem to be employed at the beginnings of sentences, and when enlarged letters are used, it can be in odd places. Add to that the heavy use of ligatures which change the appearance of certain letter combinations considerably, and you have a few problems. It is only with the help of the work of finer scholars that some of these strange old scripts can be included here. |
| Homilies of St Maximus of Turin , 7th century (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C.98, parte inferiore, f.89). All images from Steffens 1929, Plate 25. |
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| overview | text | alphabet | ligatures | abbreviations | exercises | transcript | translation | |
| Click on each of the above to walk your way through the text. The transcript will appear in a separate window so that you can use it for reference at any time. These exercises are designed to guide you through the text, not test you, so you can cheat as much as you like. |
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 Script sample for this example |
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Index
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Index
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