Curvy letters

One of the problems of cutting letters in stone is making nice curves. For this reason, Roman inscriptions use capital letters that have more straight lines than the cursive script used on papyrus or walls. However, some capital letters still have curves.

The mason of this tombstone tried to copy the style of the monumental Roman script, but clearly had a hard time writing curves. We can see this when we look at the snaky letter S that appears five times, but each time slightly different in shape and size. In addition, all of them are written more or less aslant instead of straight up (look especially at the last letter of the boy's name).

This limestone was not even the most difficult stone to cut. Imagine the skill of those masons who had to work with marble, a much more solid stone (fig. 1).

In the second line, the mason had to be creative to solve a carving problem.