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Home , Arabic alphabet, Braille, Cambodian Braille, Cuneiform, Greek alphabet, Greek Braille

Thompson Library Floor Inlays & Elevator Etchings Foundation Stones “Foundation Stones” of the Library

Set in the terrazzo of the William • have unit letters Guides to the Floor Inlays Oxley Thompson Memorial Library’ for simple and ground and first floors are 49 metal marks to indicate different or Ground Floor tablets documenting forms of writ- the absence of . 1 - of the Zoroastrian ten from around the (3), Tibetan (31), Thai (16), and Bur- holy , , . 7th . BCE world. Forty-five additional etchings mese (#3, First floor elevator door) 2 Glagolitic - the oldest Slavic , are featured in the decorative framing ca. 9th c. CE show how these systems ramified as of the Stack Tower elevators. These they spread from . 3 Letters of Devanagari - used for , examples include full systems Hindi and other Indic that have evolved over the past 4,000 4 - devised in 1821 by to 5,000 years, some of their precur- • can be large, sors, and a few other graphic forms like Chinese (8), or small, like Japa- 5 Letters of the precursor of Ethiopic that collectively give a sense of the nese (9). The Linear (32) (southern Arabia, early 1st millennium CE). immense visual range of inscriptive of pre- was a sylla- techniques. Writing systems estab- bary. Mayan (44), the best-known of 6 Cherokee - the syllabary devised and publicly demonstrated by Sequuoyah lish the foundation upon which all the Meso-Americans scripts, was a in 1821 library collections are built, and it is syllabary, as are recently invented fitting that these “foundation stones” scripts for indigenous North American 7 Modern Korean - a headline decorate this building. Though not ex- languages such as Cherokee (6) and 8 Chinese - unambiguous numerical Cree (15). characters haustive, the inlays illustrate the rich diversity and graphic beauty of the 9 Hiragana - a Japanese syllabary, one heritage of making marks on • Graphic systems for component of the current Japanese writing two-dimensional surfaces to record notating dance and music are not and communicate information. transcriptive of speech but make use 10 Labanotation - a method for of the technology of writing. Djembe notating dance (13) is African notation for drum- • have distinct 11 Letters of the alphabet letters for and vowels. ming; a diagram showing the Manual 12 Combined set of all Cyrillic and The (38) is used for Alphabet (39) for finger- can letters used to write many languages in works kept in also be seen. 13 Djembe - a drum notation of Africa the Library’s print collections. Oth- er well-represented alphabets are 14 Letters of the alphabet • The of Easter Cyrillic (12), Greek (25), and Korean Island (48) has not been deciphered. 15 Cree - one of several syllabaries devised (7). Examples of much less com- Tengwar, or “Elvish” (23) was invent- for Algonquian languages monly seen alphabets are Avestan ed by . . R.Tolkien and featured in 16 Thai - an Indic-derived script of (1), Egyptian Coptic (27) and West his fictional Middle-Earth. Southeast African ’ko (19). Braille (4) is no 17 Olmec - a precursor of Mayan writing doubt the most widely used tactilely The gallery of inlays also includes mediated alphabet. images of and cave 18 Chamic - script of an Austronesian language once spoken in what is now paintings (40) that were the precur- Vietnam

• have sors of full writing. One of these was a decorative element in the original 19 N’ko - an alphabetic script of West letters with optional diacritic marks Africa for the Manding (Mandekan) for vowels. Phoenician (46), Hebrew library building, uncovered during its language renovation. (14, 43) and Arabic (11) are examples 20 - from the region, of abjads. The (37), 16th c. CE and the later Manchu that resembles A diagram of the floors and the eleva- it, are the farthest-flung offshoots of tor frames provides brief identifiers of 21 Aztec - post-Mayan writing of the heritage. each script’s name and origin. pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

22 Brahmi - ancient Indic script, source of many writing systems of South and Special thanks to J. Marshall Unger, Department of East Asian Languages and Southeast Asia who helped write this brochure. Ground Floor

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23 Tengwar - the “Elvish” script invented 33 Samaritan - a variant of the Hebrew 42 Cuneiform - clay-impressed signs used by J.R.R. Tolkein abjad for several different languages of ancient West Asia 24 - early Cyrillic 34 Egyptian hieroglyphics - deciphered by Champollion with the aid of the 43 Early Hebrew - forms from before 25 Letters of the ca. 600 BCE

26 Tagalog - a script from pre-Spanish 35 Modern Western music notation - the 44 Mayan - a now-deciphered pre- Phillipines in the Indic lineage first eight bars of “Carmen Ohio” Columbian Meso-American syllabic system 27 Coptic - one of several Egyptian scripts 36 - an early medieval alphabet developed since the used for ,, ca. 800 CE 45 Ndjuka - a 20th c. syllabary once used in

Suriname (formerly Dutch Guayana) 28 Etruscan - the Greek-derived script of 37 Mongolian - the modern form of the the most important Italian civilization traditional script 46 Phoenician - an ancient Semitic alphabet before dating from around 1050 BCE 38 The Latin alphabet in a multitude of 47 Hexagrams from the Yi Jing ( Ching) or

Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese First Floor 39 The Manual Alphabet used in system 29 Gujarati -an of northwest India conjunction with American 48 Rongorongo - as yet undeciphered 30 Some text in Gregg - a once signs of widely used sound-based stenography 40 Petroglyphs and from around the world - precursors of full 49 Letters () of the Futhark-used to 31 Letters of Tibetan the most important writing write prior to the trans-Himalayan Indic-derived script use of the Latin alphabet from ca. 150 CE 41 Lontara’ - a palm-leaf script of South 32 - a syllabary used to write pre- Sulawesi (Indonesia) in the Indic traditon Homeric Greek, possibly 15th - 13th c. BCE First Floor

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7 1. Cuneiform 6 2. Futhark 4 3. Latin Black-letter font 5 4. Greek 5. Mayan 2 5 6. Arabic 4 1 3 3 Ground Floor Right 1. Modern Aramaic 2 2. Egyptian hieroglyphics 3. Braille 1 4. Cherokee 6 5. Djembe 6. Decorative nagari font 7. Manual Alphabet used in conjunction with American Sign Language Guides to the Elevator Doors First Floor Left First Floor Right

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1. Avestan 7 2. Modern Cyrillic 3. Burmese 8 4. Coptic 7 5. Nandi (Sinhalese) 6. Chinese 6 7. Latin 5 8. Tagalog (Phillipines) 6 9. Aramaic 5 4 4 3 3 First Floor Right 1. Brahmi 2. Signs of the Zodiac 2 3. Thai 2 4. Rongorongo 5. Hiragana (Japanese) 1 6. Olmec 1 7. Old Church Slavonic 8. Glagolitic 9. Blank Credits: 9 Floor installations were suggested by 8 9 Pete Confar, Project Architect from Acock Associates Architects, Colum- bus.

7 The goal of exemplifying writing 7 systems came from Dr. Predrag 8 Matejic, Curator of the Hilandar Research Library.

6 The selection of images and design 5 of the “Foundation Stones” were 6 done by Pam McClung, the Library’s 5 Graphic Designer. 4 Several students from the Knowlton School of Architecture assisted 3 4 3 in the technical production of the plaques.

Guides to the Elevator Doors the Elevator Guides to 2 The metal floor inlays were cast by 2 Degginers’ Foundry, Topeka, Kan- sas, and installed by Ardit Flooring, 1 Columbus. 1 The elevator door panels were fabri- cated by the Gunderlin Company for installation by Otis Elevator, Colum- bus.

Professors Brian Joseph, Depart- 11th Floor Left 11th Floor Right ment of , and J. Marshall Unger, Department of East Asian 1. Chamic 1. Caucasian Albanian () Languages and Literatures, provided 2. Korean 2. Labanotation (for dance) advice on the description of the 3. Tengwar (Tolkien Elvish) 3. Cree examples. 4. Tibetan 4. Lontara’ (Buginese) 5. Yi Jing (I Ching) hexagrams 5. Khmer Corrections to this pamphlet’s text may be 6. Old Javanese 6. Mongolian sent to [email protected]. 7. Hebrew 7. Etruscan 8. Blank 8. Tagalog 9. Blank 9. Blank William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library 1858 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43210

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