Boustrofedon is a writing technique where lines alternate directions, used by ancient cultures and still used today. It may seem difficult to read, but is efficient for space. Ancient texts lacked spaces and had unusual word order. Reverse boustrophedon and angled text were also used. These techniques were crucial when writing materials were expensive and bulky.
Boustrofedon is a writing technique in which lines of text flow in alternating directions. This method of writing was used by many ancient cultures and continues to be used today in some regions of the world, although in many cases mainly as a curiosity. While it might seem difficult to read boustrophedon text, it’s actually relatively easy to read once you get used to it.
To use the English language as an example, the first line of text written in Bustrophaedon runs left to right, as it normally would. The next row, on the other hand, would start from the right and move to the left. The letters would also be flipped, essentially creating a mirror image. The next line will again read from left to right, and so on, until the end of the text.
The word bustrophedone is Greek and means “to turn like an ox while it ploughs”. As anyone who has mowed a lawn knows, it’s more efficient to mow a lawn back and forth, than it is to mow a swath, trudge back to the beginning, mow another swath, and so on. The argument with the boustrophedon text is that text is most efficient to write and read when written in the same way a field is plowed, and this may be true of the ancients, as they were used to it.
As if bustrophaedon wasn’t enough, ancient texts were also typically written without spaces, to be as efficient with space as possible, and often the word order in sentences was highly unusual. People who can read ancient languages still often have problems with texts on monuments and tablets because the writing system is so unfamiliar, which explains why some ancient languages took so long to disentangle, since they people had no idea where the word breaks were.
To up the ante a little, you can also use the reverse bustrophedon. In the reverse bustrophedon, the text is not only written backwards on alternating lines, it is also flipped 180 degrees. Some enterprising scribes also wrote text at a 90-degree angle that ran across, creating two layers of text to sift through.
All of these techniques might seem a little preposterous to modern humans, but they were crucial developments at a time when paper was unknown and writing materials were expensive, bulky, and difficult to prepare. Even after the development of paper and vellum these materials were still extremely expensive and our modern system of writing in long paragraphs with spaces would have been terribly wasteful.
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