Ceramic tile pavement design from Higham Ferreers, Northamptonshire, produced in 1340. Via
Tag Archives: ancient
Tonina – ruins from the Maya civilization. Not sure what this is supposed to mean, but it seems important!
The Grecas contain a message from the ancients or the gods, perhaps even Quetzalcoatl himself. / The corners add up to 28, which was interpreted as linking it with a 28-day lunar calendar used at one time by the Maya. / The secret pattern in the Grecas becomes evident when the photograph is cropped to remove the steps, as seen below. The left and right sides appear aligned to form an “X.”
Harley 1861, f. 307 Carmina figurata from the British Library.
Cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of writing. It’s about 5000 years old, and was the dominant written language in the Middle East (while the Egyptians were all hieroglyphics). It was used for three millennia.
For our digital convenience, it’s been packaged into Unicode.
Photo by nantel.
Mitla, Mexico. The most important site of the Zapotec people, and later the Mixtecs. Each unit of the mosaic is a separate stone, and they are held together only by the weight of the surrounding stones.
Mitla was inhabited apx 2000 years ago. The European invaders fucked it up, of course.
Mirror writing in Ottoman calligraphy. Formed by writing in the direction that is the reverse of the natural way for a given language, such that the result is the mirror image of normal writing.
( ‾́ ◡ ‾́ )
Poem XIX, a carmina figurata originally by Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius in the 300s. This version was made in the 1590s, with red ink to emphasize the word. Read more.
Post updated in 2024.
Tessellations from the Alhambra, a palace and fortress complex located in Granada (Spain). It was constructed during the mid 10th century by the Berber ruler Badis ben Habus of the Kingdom of Granada in al-Andalus.
