Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 543

THE ALPHABET
Between the monumental and the cursive scripts, there was a whole series of varieties which had some of the peculiarities of each group. There were: (1) lapidary and book semi-cursive scripts (Fig. 245 and 247), which contained some capital letters and some cursive or semi-cursive characters; (2) the early uncial or rather semi-uncial script, of the third century A.D., which also was a mixture of capitals, cursive characters and uncials. (3) The early semi-uncial script seems to have developed into the beautiful uncial script, the exact origin of the latter being uncertain.
Obscure also is the meaning of the term "uncials," which some scholars, on the authority of St. Jerome, derived from Lat. literae unciales,
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Fig. 243-Varieties of the early Roman cursive script (wax tablets from Pompeii and Alburnus Major)
"inch-high letters." The uncial script appears in official Roman documents, particularly in Africa, from the third century A.D. onwards, and was the usual book-hand for over 500 years (fourth-eighth centuries). On the whole, it was still a mixed script, the majority of the letters being capitals, some letters (h, 1, q) being minuscule, and four letters (a, d, e, m) having