What is the ‘boustrophedon system’?

Ancient Greeks used to write from left to right or right to left. This phenomenon was known as the boustrophedon system in which the text could run from left to right (or vice versa), reach the end of the line and then start a new line from right to left. Boustrophedon is the Greek name for "ox-plough turn".

Much of our knowledge of the boustrophedon system comes from the fragmentary inscriptions known as the Gortyn code - the codification of the civil law of the ancient Greek city-state of Gortyn in southern Crete. This code (dating from the 5th century BCE) was found on the circular walls of what might have been a bouleuterion (a building in ancient Greece which housed the council of citizens of a democratic city state) or other public civic building in the agora (central public space) of Gortyn.

THIS EXAMPLE OF BOUSTROPHEDON TEXT WAS

AIDEPIKIW EHT ROF YLLACIFICEPS NETTIRW

ARTICLE ON THIS OX TURNING METHOD OF

TNEICNA NI TXET HTIW LLAW A GNIREVOC

GREECE AND ELSEWHERE

In today’s world, boustrophedonics is used by the U.S. Public Land Survey System and Canada's Dominion Land Survey as the numbering schemes of sections within survey townships in the United States and Canada. In the U.K., and in some European cities, the term is used by postmen to describe street numbering which proceeds serially in one direction then turns back in the other.