ok someone give me a hebrew school please
OK I kind of want to do an education series on the evolution of writing.
First you do Ugaritic stuff in cuneiform in unbaked gingerbread (then you bake some of them, and let others air-dry).
Then you do lapidary scripts in pre-baked gingerbread, chipping letters into it with, I dunno, the pointy end of a teaspoon, if something sharper wasn't available. When it fractures from overenthusiasm, you can just eat the extra.
(Fondant icing would also work but gingerbread is cooler.)
Then you invent ink-making by burning olive oil and adding wine and gum arabic.
If you can find a potter who's got some kiln disasters, you could do writing on shards. Anyway, once you've invented ink, you've got cursive script.
If you've got the right sort of reeds, you could make papyrus. If you've got space, you could even make parchment, if you could find someone to supply you with a skin.
You could develop from tablets to scrolls to codices.
Then you could invent paper. You'd do writing, woodcuts (possibly with potatoes), and proceed to movable type.
That'd be a whole semester right there and it's doable on a pretty low budget.
This entry also appears at http://hatam-soferet.dreamwidth.org/854857.html.
people have commented there, and you're welcome to join them. I've disabled LJ comments for the time being because of excessive spam.
First you do Ugaritic stuff in cuneiform in unbaked gingerbread (then you bake some of them, and let others air-dry).
Then you do lapidary scripts in pre-baked gingerbread, chipping letters into it with, I dunno, the pointy end of a teaspoon, if something sharper wasn't available. When it fractures from overenthusiasm, you can just eat the extra.
(Fondant icing would also work but gingerbread is cooler.)
Then you invent ink-making by burning olive oil and adding wine and gum arabic.
If you can find a potter who's got some kiln disasters, you could do writing on shards. Anyway, once you've invented ink, you've got cursive script.
If you've got the right sort of reeds, you could make papyrus. If you've got space, you could even make parchment, if you could find someone to supply you with a skin.
You could develop from tablets to scrolls to codices.
Then you could invent paper. You'd do writing, woodcuts (possibly with potatoes), and proceed to movable type.
That'd be a whole semester right there and it's doable on a pretty low budget.
This entry also appears at http://hatam-soferet.dreamwidth.org/854857.html.
people have commented there, and you're welcome to join them. I've disabled LJ comments for the time being because of excessive spam.