Historical Writing-System Catalog
Ancient and foundational scripts of the epigraphic record — from the Phoenician abjad through the Greek and Latin alphabets, the Egyptian and cuneiform mixed systems, and the Aegean syllabaries. Each row lists the script family (alphabet / abjad / abugida / syllabary / logographic / mixed), region of origin, approximate date of invention, and decipherment status. Every row is read live at build time from OnlyCSharp.Data.Catalogs.History.Epigraphy.Scripts.ScriptCatalog.All. Authored as .razor; rendered to static HTML.
Source: standard epigraphy / paleography facts (script family, region, approximate invention date, decipherment status) — uncopyrightable scholarly facts; Wikipedia “Epigraphy” and per-script articles are cited only as a see-also, their CC BY-SA prose is not reused. Each record carries a WikiSlug provenance anchor. See the leaf README.
| Script | Family | Region | Invented | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin | Alphabet | Italic peninsula | 700 BCE | Deciphered | Adapted from Etruscan; basis of most modern Western alphabets. |
| Greek | Alphabet | Greece | 800 BCE | Deciphered | First true alphabet (vowels written); Ionic variant standardised c. 403 BC. |
| Hebrew | Abjad | Levant | 1000 BCE | Deciphered | Square / Aramaic script form adopted after the Babylonian exile. |
| Phoenician | Abjad | Levant | 1200 BCE | Deciphered | Ancestor of Greek and Hebrew; consonant-only abjad of 22 letters. |
| Etruscan | Alphabet | Etruria | 700 BCE | Partially deciphered | Script is readable; the Etruscan language is only partially understood. |
| EgyptianHieroglyphic | Mixed | Egypt | 3200 BCE | Deciphered | Logographic + phonetic + determinative; deciphered by Champollion in 1822. |
| EgyptianHieratic | Mixed | Egypt | 2700 BCE | Deciphered | Cursive priestly script derived from hieroglyphic; written right-to-left. |
| EgyptianDemotic | Mixed | Egypt | 650 BCE | Deciphered | Late cursive script; one of the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone. |
| AkkadianCuneiform | Mixed | Mesopotamia | 2300 BCE | Deciphered | Wedge-shaped logographic + syllabic script impressed into clay tablets. |
| LinearB | Syllabary | Mycenaean Greece | 1450 BCE | Deciphered | Mycenaean Greek syllabary; deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952. |
| CypriotSyllabary | Syllabary | Cyprus | 1000 BCE | Deciphered | Used for Arcadocypriot Greek and Eteocypriot c. 11th-4th centuries BC. |