Information about Abecedarium

An abecedarium (or abecedary) is an inscription consisting of the letters of the alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises.

Some abecedaria include obsolete letters which are not otherwise attested in inscriptions. For example, abecedaria in the Etruscan alphabet from Marsiliana include the letters B, D, and O, which indicate sounds not present in the Etruscan language and are therefore not found in Etruscan inscriptions. Others, such as those known from Safaitic inscriptions, list the letters of the alphabet in different orders, suggesting that the script was casually rather than formally learned.

At, or near, the beginning of the Christian era, the Latin alphabet had already undergone its principal changes, and had become a fixed and definite system. The Greek alphabet, moreover, with certain slight modifications, was becoming closely assimilated to the Latin. Towards the eighth century of Rome, the letters assumed their artistic forms and lost their older, narrower ones. Nor have the three letters added by the Emperor Claudius ever been found in use in Christian inscriptions. The letters themselves, it may be said, fell into disuse at the death of the Emperor in question. The alphabet, however, employed for monumental inscriptions differed so completely from the cursive as to make it wholly impossible to mistake the one for the other. The uncial, occurring very rarely on sculptured monuments, and reserved for writing, did not make its appearance before the fourth century. The number of Christian objects bearing the Abecedaria, with the exception of two vases found at Carthage, is extremely limited. On the other hand, those of heathen origin are more plentiful, and include certain tablets used by stone-cutters' apprentices while learning their trade. Stones have also been found in the catacombs, bearing the symbols A, B, C, etc. These are arranged, sometimes, in combinations which have puzzled the sagacity of scholars. One such, found in the cemetery of St. Alexander, in the Via Nomentana, is inscribed as follows:

AXBVCTESDR . . . . . .BCCEECHI EQGPH. . . .M MNOPQ RSTVXYZ

This represents, in all probability, a schoolperson's task, which may be compared with a denarius of L. Cassius Caecinianus, whereon the inscription runs thus:

AX, BV, CT, DS, ER, FQ, GP, HO, IN, KM

It is to Jerome that we owe an explanation of this curious trifle. He tells us that, in order to train the memory of young children, they were made to learn the alphabet in a double form, joining A to X, and so on with the other letters. A stone found at Rome in 1877, and dating from the sixth or seventh century, seems to have been used in a school, as a model for learning the alphabet, and, points, incidentally, to the long continuance of old methods of teaching.

Materials of sculpture through history

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State Party Tunisia
Type Cultural
Criteria ii, iii, vi
Reference 37
Region Arab States

Inscription History
Inscription 1979 (3rd Session)
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catacombs are a network of underground burial galleries beneath San Sebastiano fuori le mura, in Rome. The derivation of the word itself is disputed and it remains unclear if it ultimately derives from the cemetery itself or from the locality in which it is found.
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denarius (plural: denarii) after 211 BC, a small silver coin, and it was the most common coin produced for circulation but was slowly debased until its replacement by the antoninianus.
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Jerome (ca. 347 – September 30, 420; Greek: Ευσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ιερώνυμος
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1840s 1850s 1860s - 1870s - 1880s 1890s 1900s
1874 1875 1876 - 1877 - 1878 1879 1880

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Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
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school is an institution where students (or "pupils") learn while under the supervision of teachers. In most systems of formal education, students progress through a series of schools: primary school, secondary school, and possibly a university ,
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An Abecediary is the full alphabet carved in stone or written in book form, historically found in churches, monasteries and other ecclesiastical buildings. It can also be spelt Abecedary and is pronounced as 'Abbey-see-duh-ree'.
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Abecedarium

See Also

Materials of sculpture through history