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The Reversed Half letter H (Ꟶ or ꟶ) Was Epigraphic letter used in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul.
| Reversed half H | |
|---|---|
| Ꟶ ꟶ | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Unicode value | U+A7F5, U+A7F6 |
| History | |
| Development |
|
| Descendants | H |
| Other | |
The purpose of the Reversed Half H character is to indicate aspirate h or rough breathing. It is found in word-initial position, and following c, p, and t, in words which have an original Greek χ (chi), φ (Phi), and θ (Theta). Because of this it is reasonable to assume that this letter has the same kind of origin (whether directly or in parallel invention) as do the original "spiritus asper" (⊢) and "spiritus lenis" (⊣) characters devised by the Alexandrian grammarian Aristophanes in c. 200 BC.
The Reversed Half H is commonly found in Roman inscriptions from the Roman provinces of Gaul, particularly the areas of Lyon and Nîmes in modern France, but was not normally used in inscriptions from other parts of the Roman empire. "Cagnat’s Cours d'épigraphie latine" (1898) lists the various forms of the letter H found in Roman inscriptions, of which the Reversed Half H is the only form of the letter which is commonly distinguished from the ordinary H in diplomatic transcriptions.
A few authors have considered the Reversed Half H to be a ligature of H with the preceding letter, but the standard catalogues of Roman epigraphic inscriptions all treat the Reversed Half H as a distinct letter. where the Reversed Half H is described as H dimidiée (“halved H”), in contrast to ligatured letters which are specified as "liés en monogramme", which roughly translates to "linked in monogram". There are some inscriptions where H does physically ligate with a preceding letter, and in doing so loses its left stem, and these examples should be represented at the character level as ligatures.
for the PH ligature (), and for the NTH ligature () in the Epitaph of Crispia Aphrodisia given in "Inscriptions antiques de Nîmes" (1893) p. 664. However, in all cases where the epigraphic catalogues show an isolated Reversed Half H letterform, the Reversed Half H is not conjoined with the preceding letter in the actual inscription, and there is clear space between the two letters, so they cannot be considered to be ligatures.
The Reversed Half H commonly occurs after the letters C, P or T, in the middle of a word, but it may also occur as the first letter of a word, and in such cases the diplomatic transcriptions separate the Reversed Half H from the preceding word by a word space or by a word separator point.
References[edit]
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