Cursive writing of Gaulish potters

The cursive writing of Latin is known mainly from papyri and from the wax tablets of Pompeii and Dacia (A.D. 131-167), but there is another class which has been overlooked, and this belongs mainly to a period intermediate between the Pompeian and Dacian examples, but is more closely akin to the Pompeian script. The Gaulish potters of Terra Sigillata (the so-called Samian ware) were occasionally addicted, especially in the Hadrianic period, to the practice of writing their names with a stylus in the clay of their moulds before baking them in the kiln. Naturally these signatures are reversed on the vases formed in the moulds, but for the sake of clearness I have in all cases reproduced them as originally written. This writing has sometimes been destroyed or obscured by the addition of the footstand, since the signatures usually occur below the decoration. These reversed signatures were formerly often misunderstood ; in one museum in this country they are described as written in Greek and they have even been regarded as Oriental script. Thus Roach Smith states that a signature (which we now know to be CRICIRO reversed) ‘had been interpreted by Mr. Foster “Daoud made me.”’

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