Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Shards
Graidhne na Ruadh brings us these faux cuneiform shards. From a storytelling standpoint you really can't beat a prop that by its nature needs translation. Not to mention the need to assemble multiple pieces to get the complete text. If nothing else the parts of a clay tablet serve as convenient plot tokens.
I really love early Semitic languages like cuneiform. They are quite ancient and rather alien. I agree with Propnomicon, they make great props, clues, and items for RPGs. The only other language as cool as cuneiform is kufic script, especially the medieval cubic kufic.
ReplyDeleteI’m going to highly recommend AWOL, no not absent without leave, it stands for Ancient World On Line, http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/ This site has daily and sometimes several posts a day about such subjects as linguistics, ancient cultures & etc, that is not just good for followers of ancient history, but for prop makers. This site represents a huge corpus of information about ancient cultures this is well worth mining.
Another site well worth visiting is paleobabble, http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/ which I have recommended before for its linguistics analytics and great discussion about fakes, shams, and counterfeits. This site is a must for prop makers, because it follows and unmasks the mercenary and fraudulent makers of faux relics. Their links are great resources for the history buff and the prop maker. If you probe around, they have some good cuneiform links as well.
Far better than any of my polyclay tablets. A great inspiration and a very nice piece of art.
ReplyDeleteA very nice set of pieces, that cry out to be picked up and handled.
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