Saturday 14 September 2013

Indian Picture Writing

     I had completely forgotten about this until I recently started digitalising my old slides. I took this photo in January 1983 in the Casa de la Libertad ("Freedom House") in Sucre, the old capital of Bolivia. A sheet of paper covered with local Indian picture writing has been pinned to the wall, and it is intended to be read in an unusual style, called in Greek, boustrephon, or "ox-turning". Essentially, the human characters are pointing in the direction of reading. It starts at the lower right, and moves left then, like an ox ploughing a furrow, turns right, then left again, and finally right again, ending with the two vertical lines at the top right. Can you work out what it depicts?
     It is the Lord's Prayer.

 If you want to see some more humourous signs taken during my travel, click here.

2 comments:

  1. "It starts at the lower left, and moves left then..."

    Don't you mean starts at the lower right? That's what would make sense.

    A translation would be great. This is fun, though I can't make almost any of it out!

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  2. You're the first person to note the mistake. I've corrected it now.

    ReplyDelete