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Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts
[George Douros]
This is a fantastic source of free high-quality fonts for scripts of the greater Aegean vicinity, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Meroitic, Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform, Musical Symbols and all Symbol Blocks in the Unicode Standard. George Douros is their Greek font designer. His free fonts come with this exemplary footnote: In lieu of a licence: Fonts in this site are offered free for any use; they may be opened, edited, modified, regenerated, posted, packaged and redistributed. Many of his fonts contributed to important section in the GNU Freefont project. Here is the list: - Abidos (2018). An attempt to catalogue about 8000 Egyptian hieroglyps. His Nilus font (2018) catalogues the Gardiner hieroglyphs.
- Aegean (2007-2012). Covers Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, Greek Extended, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Linear B Syllabary, Linear B Ideograms, Aegean Numbers, Ancient Greek Numbers, Ancient Symbols, Phaistos Disc, Lycian, Carian, Old Italic, Ugaritic, Old Persian, Cypriot Syllabary, Phoenician, Lydian, Archaic Greek Musical Notation. Other things in it: Linear A, Cretan Hieroglyphs, Cypro-Minoan, Ancient Greek Alphabets, Phrygian, Old Italic Alphabets (Cumaean, Archaic Etruscan, Neo Etruscan, Ancient Latin, Lugano, Faliscan, Marsiliana, Messapic, Middle Adriatic South Picene, North Picene, Oscan, Umbrian), the Arkalochori Axe and Anatolian Hieroglyphs.
- Aegyptus (2007-2020) and Gardiner. Over 7000 hieroglyphs. In addition, we have Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, Egyptian Transliteration characters, some punctuation and other symbols.
- Akkadian (2007). Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Ugaritic, Cuneiform, Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation.
- Alexander (2007, text typeface built around the Greek letters originally designed by Alexander Wilson in 1744; compare with Wilson Greek (1996, Matthew Carter) and Junicode (2006, Peter S. Baker)). The Latin and Cyrillic parts are based on Garamond.
- Alfios. Lowercase upright Greek were designed in 1805 by Firmin Didot (1764-1836) and cut by Walfard and Vibert. The typeface, together with a complete printing house, was donated in 1821 to the new Greek state by Didot's son, Ambroise Firmin Didot (1790-1876). Lowercase italic Greek were designed in 1802 by Richard Porson (1757-1808) and cut by Richard Austin. They were first used by Cambridge University Press in 1810. Capitals, Latin and Cyrillic, as well as the complete bold weights, have been designed in an attempt to create a well-balanced font. The font covers the Windows Glyph List, Greek Extended, various typographic extras and some Open Type features (Numerators, Denominators, Fractions, Old Style Figures, Historical Forms, Stylistic Alternates, Ligatures); it is available in regular, italic, bold and bold italic.
- Anaktoria. Douros: Grecs du roi was designed by Claude Garamond (1480-1561) between 1541 and 1544, commissioned by king Francis I of France, for the exclusive use by the Imprimerie Nationale in Paris. Greek in Akaktoria is based on a modern version of Grecs du roi prepared by Mindaugas Strockis in 2001. Lowercase Latin stems from the titles in the 1623 First Folio Edition of Shakespeare. Scott Mann & Peter Guither prepared a modern version for The Illinois Shakespeare Festival in 1995. Cyrillic has been designed to match the above Greek and Latin.
- Analecta (2007, Byzantine style). An ecclesiastic scripts font, in Byzantine uncial style, covering Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Coptic, typographica varia, Specials, Gothic and Deseret.
- Anatolian
- Aroania: In 1927, Victor Julius Scholderer (1880-1971), on behalf of the Society for the Promotion of Greek Studies, got involved in choosing and consulting the design and production of a Greek type called New Hellenic cut by the Lanston Monotype Corporation. He chose the revival of a round, and almost monoline type which had first appeared in 1492 in the edition of Macrobius, ascribable to the printing shop of Giovanni Rosso (Joannes Rubeus) in Venice. Aroania is a modern recast of Victor Scholderer's New Hellenic font, on the basis of Verdana.
- Asea (2020, Latin-Greek-Cyrillic). A modern font based on Firmin Didot's Greek type.
- Assyrian.
- Atavyros. Douros writes: Robert Granjon (1513-1589) produced his Parangonne Greque typeface (garmond size) at the instigation of Christophe Plantin as a counterpart to Garamond's Grec du roi, in Antwerp Holland, between 1560--1565. It was used in Plantin's multilingual Bible of 1572. Versions of Granjon's type were used for the 1692 edition of Diogenes Laertius and for the Greek-Dutch edition of the New Testament in 1698, both published by Henric Wetstenium in Amsterdam. A digital revival was prepared by Ralph P. Hancock for his Vusillus font in 1999. Latin and Cyrillic are based on a Goudy typeface.
- Avdira. Douros: Upright is based on the lowercase Greek letters in the typeface used by Demetrios Damilas for the edition of Isocrates, published in Milan in 1493. A digital revival was prepared by Ralph P. Hancock for his Milan (Mediolanum) font in 2000. Italic Greek were designed in 1802 by Richard Porson (1757-1808) and cut by Richard Austin. They were first used by Cambridge University Press in 1810.
- Maya. Maya covers the glyphs in J. Eric S. Thompson's A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs (1962, University of Oklahoma Press).
- MusicalSymbols (2007) or Musica (2013). Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Byzantine Musical Symbols, (Western) Musical Symbols, Archaic Greek Musical Notation. There is also the Greek musical notation font EE Music (2018) for Hellenic ecclesiastic music.
- UnicodeSymbols (2007, in the Computer Modern style) and UniDings (2013). It has every imaginable symbol: Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, IPA Extensions, Greek, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Supplementary, General Punctuation, Superscripts and Subscripts, Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Control Pictures, Optical Character Recognition, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Miscellaneous Symbols, Dingbats, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A, Supplemental Arrows-A, Supplemental Arrows-B, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B, Supplemental Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows, CJK Symbols and Punctuation, Yijing Hexagram Symbols, Vertical Forms, Combining Half Marks, CJK Compatibility Forms, Specials, Tai Xuan Jing Symbols, Counting Rod Numerals, Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, Mahjong Tile Symbols, Domino Tile Symbols.
- Symbola (2013) is an unbelievably rich font. It contains Basic Latin, IPA Extensions, Spacing Modifier Letters, Combining Diacritical Marks, Greek and Coptic, Cyrillic, Cyrillic Supplement, General Punctuation, Superscripts and Subscripts, Currency Symbols, Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Control Pictures, Optical Character Recognition, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes, Miscellaneous Symbols, Dingbats, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A, Supplemental Arrows-A, Braille Patterns, Supplemental Arrows-B, Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B, Supplemental Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows, Supplemental Punctuation, Yijing Hexagram Symbols, Combining Half Marks, Specials, Byzantine Musical Symbols, Musical Symbols, Ancient Greek Musical Notation, Tai Xuan Jing Symbols, Counting Rod Numerals, Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, Mahjong Tiles, Domino Tiles, Playing Cards, Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs, Emoticons, Ornamental Dingbats, Transport And Map Symbols, Alchemical Symbols, Geometric Shapes Extended, Supplemental Arrows, and Symbols of occasional mathematical interest. It is one of a hanful fonts that dares to have a glyph that shows the middle finger. Github link for free download. see also Symbola Goomoji (2013).
- Unidings. Various glyphs and icons.
Since George permits redistribution, I am offering his work for download here.
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