This two-way writing system reveals that modern ambigrams can have quite ancient origins, with an intuitive component in some minds. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew,Īlternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. It is sometimes turned into a mirror ambigram when written in capital letters with the removal of spaces, and the stylization of the letter Ν ( Ν).Ī boustrophedon is a type of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions.Įvery other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. In ancient Greek, the phrase 'ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ' ( wash the sins, not only the face), is a palindrome found in several locations, including the site of the church Hagia Sophia in Turkey. They are generally palindromes stylized to be visually symmetrical. Īlthough the term is recent, the existence of mirror ambigrams has been attested since at least the first millennium. This engraving is therefore readable in four directions. The first Sator square palindrome was found in the ruins of Pompeii, meaning it was created before the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.Ī sator square using the mirror writing for the representation of the letters S and N was carved in a stone wall in Oppède (France) between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, thus producing a work made up of 25 letters and 8 different characters, 3 naturally symmetrical (A, T, O), 3 others decipherable from left to right (R, P, E), and 2 others from right to left (S, N). Many ambigrams can be described as graphic palindromes. Īmbigrams published in The Strand Magazine, June 1908. Sometimes the readings will say identical things, sometimes they will say different things. One can voluntarily jump back and forth between the rival readings usually by shifting one's physical point of view (moving the design in some way) but sometimes by simply altering one's perceptual bias towards a design (clicking an internal mental switch, so to speak). Īn ambigram is a visual pun of a special kind: a calligraphic design having two or more (clear) interpretations as written words. Hofstadter describes ambigrams as 'calligraphic designs that manage to squeeze in two different readings.' 'The essence is imbuing a single written form with ambiguity'. The word ambigram was coined in 1983 by Douglas Hofstadter, an American scholar of cognitive science best known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book Gödel, Escher, Bach. There are methods to design an ambigram, a field in which some artists have become specialists. Numerous ambigram logos are famous, and ambigram tattoos have become increasingly popular. Drawing symmetrical words constitutes also a recreational activity for amateurs. It is a recent interdisciplinary concept, combining art, literature, mathematics, cognition, and optical illusions. 'Half-turn' ambigrams undergo a point reflection (180° rotational symmetry) and can be read upside down, mirror ambigrams have an axial symmetry and can be read through a reflective surface (like a mirror or a mirroring lake), and many other types of ambigrams exist.Īmbigrams are found in different languages, various alphabets and the notion often extends to numbers and other symbols.

When flipped, they remain unchanged, or they mutate to reveal another meaning. Most often, ambigrams appear as visually symmetrical words. The term was coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1983. Īn ambigram is a calligraphic design that has several interpretations as written.

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