Boustrophedon

A couple of nights ago, things being slack on ITV3, we had a go at Morse in the 'Service of All the Dead'. Yet another one of those whodunnits which have a quiet pop at the high Anglican church, all incense and shakers. Midsomer Murders is doing it all the time. We managed just over half at the first sitting, before calling it a night.

We also got out the book version, this being one of those episodes which is based on a book rather than dreamed up by some script writer, and have both now had a bit of a go. Bit too heavy going to read all the way through.

But the point of the present post is that at one point Dexter wants to flaunt his fancy education by finding a use for the obscure word (aka a word that I have not come across before) 'boustrophedon'. I was content to make a stab at it from the context, getting it very vaguely right, associating to ducks for some reason, but BH was more demanding and so I asked Cortana, who came up with various offerings from various dictionaries.

It was a bit early in the morning, but eventually I got the idea, which was that some early writings alternated the direction of read as one went down the page, so that you read the page rather in the way that an ox ploughs a field, first right to left then left to right and so on. From bous the Greek for oxen and troph (or something) for turning.

I was then directed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume 16, slice 6. Whatever slice 6 may have been. After a few taps I was taken through the Gutenburg Project (see reference 1) to a copy of the J-K part of a version of that encyclopaedia. Complete puzzle: what had J-K got to do with a B-word?

And now, having moved downstairs, I have another go and Cortana doesn't bother with Gutenburg any more and takes me straight to the boustrophedon article in what appears to be some other version of the encyclopaedia. Perhaps she is learning - which is, after all, what it says she does on her tin.

The result of all of which is that I am unlikely for forget what this word means for a day or two, even if I never get the hang of writing it down - or even of saying it.

PS: conversation over breakfast turned to how one took going back to front. Did one just have the words in the wrong order, or did one reverse the letters within the words too? Or even the letters themselves? It may have been relevant that ancient Latin did not bother about spaces between words. It was certainly the result that we all settled for reading in just the one direction, the eye being quite good at flicking back to the beginning again. Maybe someone has done some research on the underlying causes of settling on left to right as opposed to right to left. Or vice versa. Something to do with diet or, perhaps, latitude?

Reference 1: https://www.gutenberg.org/.