Someone over on reddit identifies it as Quikscript, it certainly seems likely.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quickscript_alphabet_revised_names.png" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quickscript_alphabet_revi...</a><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/243agf/identify_mystery_text_win_1000_university_of/ch38l22" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/243agf/identify...</a>
Note: "Although the donor of the BHL is suspicious that this odd script is a form of 19th-century shorthand (likely French), he acknowledges that this hypothesis remains unsupported by any evidence offered to date."<p>There are a lot of shorthand scripts:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand</a><p>It's not enough that you say some name of the script, you have to actually <i>read</i> what's written there. That's the really hard part. My girlfriend can write one shorthand fast but she depended on her colleague to transcribe the texts so produced. Even when you know the idea it doesn't mean you can read it easily.
For some reason this reminds me of Google's Prizes.org (RIP) - too bad it never really took off, bounty-based crowdsourcing is an interesting approach for projects like this one.
It's just a translation in french and in stenography of the Odyssey.<p>Here some examples :<p><a href="http://hpics.li/09fde58" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/09fde58</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/0114946" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/0114946</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/b541245" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/b541245</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/76e0876" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/76e0876</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/7844701" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/7844701</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/8fe8af9" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/8fe8af9</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/dddb734" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/dddb734</a><p><a href="http://hpics.li/6092bbe" rel="nofollow">http://hpics.li/6092bbe</a><p>;)
I wonder if it could be indecipherable because it was written in a known language by someone with a brain injury?<p>>untreated head trauma<p>probably somewhat common for the time<p>>education<p>uncommon, but then again, it's not like you find these things everyday.
The hi res images are, themselves, also in some mysterious script: the ancient TIFF file format!<p>Why not just high res PNG files so that they're easier to view? :/
Had a quick look and found on the image called bhl-0002-005 on line 18: <a href="http://pagefault.se/odyssey.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://pagefault.se/odyssey.jpg</a><p>Which to me looks like a translitiration of the word that is underlined.<p>edit: translation -> translitiration
A (heavily modified) form of Tironian shorthand?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notae" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notae</a>
I tried to identify the words present in the question in the header of the bhl-0002-005.tif file.<p>From what I can tell, after the ":" character, it seems like the author refers to "Jason" and "Aison" (Jason's father).<p>If this assumption is right, the "N"-like character that is heavily present can be identified as the "ON" syllable.<p>Other assumptions:<p>-> From Wikipedia: "[...] letter s appears as a long "s", "st" is a ligature [...]". This leads me to think that:<p>- the striked-"o" character I think is an "S"
- the curved-"\" character is a "T"<p>This combination of both characters "ST" can be found heavily in the text.<p>- the "corner"-like character is the "ET" syllable<p>I really do think that the second name is "Aison" because in bhl-0002-005.tif, one of the french sentences on the right side says:<p>"Père de Jason, roi de Phères en Tessalie"<p>which can be translated to:<p>"Father of Jason, king of Pherae in Thessaly"<p>So "father of Jason" would refer to Aison.
In the same file, on the bottom left, there is another french sentence :<p>"____! Tyro n'allait pas de main morte!"<p>which can be (very roughly) translated into:<p>"____! Tyro was heavy handed!"<p>Tyro just happens to be Aison's mother !
Just under this sentence, there are some words (mostly nouns), mixed with the other cryptic text. Here's a quick list:<p>- "Phères", the city of Pherae BUT it could also refer to one of Aison's brothers who has the same name
- "suppliant(s)", begging
- "Amythaon", other brother of Aison<p>Just under this paragraph, in the footer, the first two words next to the number (2) are:<p>"ou Jocaste" - "or Jocasta" another character of the Odyssey.<p>Interestingly, on the upper left side of the second file, you can find a date mentioned:<p>"le 25 avril 1854" so "the 25th of april 1854"<p>Which places the authorship of these side-notes 160 ago almost to the day. Funny coincidence!<p>Some useful / related links:<p>Jocaste / Jocasta:
-> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocasta" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocasta</a><p>Aison / Aeson:
-> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeson" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeson</a><p>Tyro:
-> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyro" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyro</a><p>Amythaon:
-> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amythaon" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amythaon</a><p>Pheres:
-> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheres" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheres</a><p>Pherae (city):
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pherae" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pherae</a>