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Hello
Please add a new script: Demotic.
This appears on the coins of Alexandria. For example this one:
The “L” on the reverse is not a Greek letter, but Demotic, as discussed here and in Otto Mørkholm, “Early Hellenistic Coinage from the Accession of Alexander to the Peace of Apamaea (336–188 BC)”, page 111:
It is also used on some earlier Achaemenid coins, such as this one:
I added Demotic to the list of scripts.
I tried to know more about it, since the letter really looks like a capital Latin letter L, and doesn't look like Demotic to me. I could not find a definitive answer, but I found a useful resource at https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/chicago-demotic-dictionary
This dictionary lists the word “rnp.t” with the definition “year” (https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/CDD_R.pdf) and “hsb.t” with the definition of “(regnal) year” (https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/shared/docs/CDD_H2.pdf). Some of the illustrations for the “abbreviated form” actually do look like a L.
I'm not sure why it was abbreviated this way, especially as there are other abbreviations with completely different shapes. I guess that the letter L we see on the coins is actually the Demotic letter transcribed as “t”, which looks like a slanted L in some references. I'd be interested if anyone has the full explanation.
Thank you!
What I found is that Demotic, like hieratic and hieroglyphic, consisted of both phonetic and ideographic signs. “L” doesn't seem to be an abbreviation, but rather an ideogram:
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Die aktuelle Zeit ist 15:28.
