Ancient fonts for PC, Mac and Linux

I list here a few fonts of ancient language for PCs (TrueType TTF format) that are useful to me. Alternative formats have been included where available. I am not aware of any licensing problems, please contact me if you think that there are copyright issues. I provide no support or warranty for them: use them at your own risk. Use of all fonts is free for non-commercial use, but if a license accompanies the font, please respect it. These fonts are updated when possible, with variants and test files added when existing.

Archives are standard ZIP files. Fonts must be installed in the proper manner according to the operating system you use, and the operation requires an administrative account. Usually the included PDF files preview the font using the font embedded in the PDF. This way you can see the font before installing it. Word (docx) files allow for testing the font. You do not need a PDF or Word viewer to install and use the font, these are supporting files. Please note that the font name appearing in the operating system may be slightly different from the actual name of the TTF file. Double clicking the font (Windows) will start up the font preview and install program that will display all relevant information - but the preview will not show the actual font in most cases - or right-click the font and see if there are properties displayed. In general, it is up to you to find a way to install the required font and use it on your computer since the fonts are in industry-standard formats. You can still contact me if you have a particular question that is not about how your operative system or software program works.

Phoenician and Ugaritic [LINK]

All fonts are updated to the latest version in my periodic checks, but new versions may be available in the authors' websites - see credits.

 

Credits: Aegean, Aegyptus, Akkadian, Anatolian and Maya fonts by George Douros; Egyptian hieroglyphs font by Mark-Jan Nederhof; Linear B fonts by Curtis Clark; Phoenician font © Salim Khalaf; RK fonts © Reinhold Kainhofer; Damase by WAZU.

 

A tutorial to access plane 15 characters in the font Aegean is available. The same tutorial applies to all fonts that have special characters or use registers outside the Unicode standard.

Donwload fonts

File Name Description Size(KB)
Image Aegean.zip

Aegean covers the following scripts and symbols supported by The Unicode Standard: Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, Greek Extended, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Linear B Syllabary, Linear B Ideograms, Aegean Numbers, Ancient Greek Numbers, Ancient Symbols, Phaistos Disc, Lycian, Carian, Old Italic, Ugaritic, Old Persian, Cypriot Syllabary, Phoenician, Lydian, and Archaic Greek Musical Notation. Aegean allocates in the Supplementary Private Use Plane 15, the following scripts and symbols, as yet unsupported by Unicode: Cretan Hieroglyphs, Cypro-Minoan, Linear A, the Arkalochori Axe, Ancient Greek and Old Italic variant alphabets.

 8772
Image Aegyptus.zip

The font encodes some 7100 Egyptian Hieroglyphs, all with a graphical representation. The main sources of glyphs are Hieroglyphica and the work of Alan Gardiner. Egyptian Hieroglyphs are allocated in the Supplementary Private Use Plane 15, for the lack of a standard. The font also covers Basic Latin, Egyptian Transliteration characters, Coptic, Meroitic, some Punctuation and other Symbols and the Gardiner set of Egyptian Hieroglyphs supported by The Unicode Standard.

 20978
Image Akkadian.zip

Akkadian covers the following scripts and symbols supported by The Unicode Standard: Basic Latin, Greek and Coptic, some Punctuation and other Symbols, Cuneiform, Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation. Including Assyrian font.

 5581
Image Anatolian.zip

Anatolian is a work-font, encoding Anatolian Hieroglyphs.

 1121
Image Asea.zip

Asea is the font of Greek typeface. A sophisticated Greek font. Use a UNICODE default font such as Arial Unicode as standard Greek font.

 1587
Image damase_v.2.zip

Phoenician and Ugaritic

 487
File linarb10.hqx

Linear B (for Mac)

 29
Image linarb10.zip

Linear B (for PC)

 25
Image Maya.zip

Maya covers the glyphs in J. Eric S. Thompson's "A Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs", published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1962. Maya also contains some glyphs for days, months and numbers.

 3554
Image NewGardiner.zip

TrueType font for Egyptian hieroglyphs from Unicode proposal N3349, accepted in Unicode v.9.

 973
Image rkaf1.zip

Sanskrit, Meroitic, Ugaritic and Persian Cuneiform (for PC)

 218
File RKFontsMac.sit

Sanskrit, Meroitic, Ugaritic and Persian Cuneiform (for Mac)

 218
12 object(s)