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Sampi (modern: ϡ; ancient shapes: 
, 
) is an archaic letter of the
) was mostly used between the middle of the 6th and the middle of the 5th centuries BC, although some attestations have been dated as early as the 7th century BC. It has been attested in the cities of
, ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
. It was used as an addition to the classical 24-letter alphabet in some eastern Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, to denote some type of a sibilant
Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...
sound, probably or , and was abandoned when the sound disappeared from Greek.
It later remained in use as a numeral symbol for 900 in the alphabetic (" Milesian") system of Greek numerals
Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, is a numeral system, system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal number (linguistics), ordi ...
. Its modern shape, which resembles a π inclining to the right with a longish curved cross-stroke, developed during its use as a numeric symbol in minuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
handwriting of the Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...
era.
Its current name, ''sampi'', originally probably meant "''san pi''", i.e. "like a pi", and is also of medieval origin. The letter's original name in antiquity is not known. It has been proposed that sampi was a continuation of the archaic letter '' san'', which was originally shaped like an M and denoted the sound in some other dialects. Besides ''san'', names that have been proposed for sampi include ''parakyisma'' and ''angma'', while other historically attested terms for it are ''enacosis'', ''sincope'', and ''o charaktir''.
Alphabetic sampi
As an alphabetic letter denoting a sibilant sound, sampi (shaped) was mostly used between the middle of the 6th and the middle of the 5th centuries BC, although some attestations have been dated as early as the 7th century BC. It has been attested in the cities of Miletus
Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...
, Ephesos
Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...
, Halikarnassos
Halicarnassus ( ; Latin: ''Halicarnassus'' or ''Halicarnāsus''; ''Halikarnāssós''; ; Carian: 𐊠𐊣𐊫𐊰 𐊴𐊠𐊥𐊵𐊫𐊰 ''alos k̂arnos'') was an ancient Greek city in Caria, in Anatolia.Erythrae, Teos (all situated in the region of
. According to Brixhe it probably stood for the sounds , , or . It is found in a few inscriptions in the cities of letter stood for some type of sibilant reflecting Proto-Greek .
, originally denoting the sound ) for "6", koppa (Ϙ, originally denoting the sound ) for "90", and sampi for "900". While digamma and koppa were retained in their original alphabetic positions inherited from Phoenician, the third archaic Phoenician character, san/tsade (Ϻ, denoting an sound), was not used in this way. Instead, sampi was chosen, and added at the end of the system, after omega (800).
From this, it has been concluded that the system must have been invented at a time and place when digamma and koppa were still either in use or at least still remembered as parts of the alphabetic sequence, whereas san had either already been forgotten, or at least was no longer remembered with its original alphabetic position. In the latter case, according to a much debated view, sampi itself may in fact have been regarded as being san, but with a new position in the alphabet.
The dating of the emergence of this system, and with it of numeric sampi, has been the object of much discussion. At the end of the 19th century, authors such as Thompson placed its full development only in the 3rd century BC. Jeffery states that the system as a whole can be traced much further back, into the 6th century BC. An early, though isolated, instance of apparent use of alphabetic Milesian numerals in Athens occurs on a stone inscribed with several columns of two-digit numerals, of unknown meaning, dated from the middle of the 5th century BC.
While the emergence of the system as a whole has thus been given a much earlier dating than was often assumed earlier, actual occurrences of the letter sampi in this context have as yet not been found in any early examples. According to Threatte, the earliest known use of numeric sampi in a stone inscription occurs in an inscription in Magnesia from the 2nd century BC, in a phrase denoting a sum of money (") but the exact numeric meaning of this example is disputed. In Athens, the first attestation is only from the beginning of the 2nd century AD, again in an inscription naming sums of money.
Earlier than the attestations in the full function as a numeral are a few instances where sampi was used in Athens as a mark to enumerate sequences of things in a set, along with the 24 other letters of the alphabet, without implying a specific decimal numeral value. For instance, there is a set of 25 metal tokens, each stamped with one of the letters from alpha to sampi, which are dated to the 4th century BC and were probably used as identification marks for judges in the courts of the Athenian democracy.
In 
or, in a ligature, ) meant "1×1000", a theta over sampi (
) meant "9×1000", and so on. In the examples cited by Gardthausen, a slightly modified shape of sampi, with a shorter right stem (
), is used. This system was later simplified into one where the thousands operator was marked just as a small stroke to the left of the letter (͵α = 1000).
. Square-topped shapes, with the middle vertical stroke either of equal length with the outer ones 
or longer 
, are also found in early papyri. This form fits the earliest attested verbal description of the shape of sampi as a numeral sign in the ancient literature, which occurs in a remark in the works of the 2nd-century AD physician 
From the time of the earliest papyri, the square-topped forms of handwritten sampi alternate with variants where the top is rounded (
, 
) or pointed (
, 
). The rounded form also occurs in stone inscriptions in the Roman era. In the late Roman period, the arrow-shaped or rounded forms are often written with a loop connecting the two lines at the right, leading to the "ace-of-spades" form 
, or to 
. These forms, in turn, occasionally have another decorative stroke added on the left (
). It can be found attached in several different ways, from the top (
) or the bottom (
). From these shapes, finally, the modern form of sampi emerges, beginning in the 9th century, with the two straight lines becoming more or less parallel (
, 
, 
).
In medieval western manuscripts describing the Greek alphabet, the arrowhead form is sometimes rendered as 
.Gardthausen, ''Palaeographie'', p.167.
", transcribed as ''ś''. This would fit in with the "plausible, but not provable" hypothesis that the root contained in the Carian-Greek names spelled with sampi, "Πανυασσις" and "Οασσασσις", is identical with a root *''uś-/waś-'' identified elsewhere in Carian, which contains the Carian ''ś'' sound spelled with . Adiego follows this with the hypothesis that both the Carian letter and sampi could ultimately go back to Greek Ζ (
). Like the san–sampi hypothesis, the Carian hypothesis remains an open and controversial issue, especially since the knowledge of Carian itself is still fragmentary and developing.
While the origin of sampi continues to be debated, the identity between the alphabetic Ionian sampi () and the numeral for 900 has rarely been in doubt, although in the older literature it was sometimes mentioned only tentatively,Thompson, ''Handbook'', p.7. An isolated position was expressed in the early 20th century by Jannaris, who – without mentioning the alphabetic use of Ionian – proposed that the shape of numeric sampi was derived from a juxtaposition of three "T"s, i.e. 3×300=900. (He also rejected the historical identity of the other two numerals, stigma (6) and koppa (90), with their apparent alphabetic predecessors.) Today, the link between alphabetic and numeral sampi is universally accepted.
. This opinion has been rejected as phonologically impossible by Soldati, who points out that the sound only ever occurred in the middle of words and therefore could not have been used in the beginning of its own name.
As for the name ''sampi'' itself, it is generally agreed today that it is of late origin and not the original name of the character in either its ancient alphabetic or its numeral function. Babiniotis describes it as "medieval", while Jannaris places its emergence "after the thirteenth century". However, the precise time of its emergence in Greek is not documented.
The name is already attested in manuscript copies of an
In the Greco–Iberian alphabet, used during the 4th century BC in eastern Spain to write the 
, with three vertical lines of equal length.
Its pronunciation is uncertain, but it is transliterated as .
The Greek script was also adapted in Hellenistic times to write the 
, which has been described as "the Greek with a Ρ above"), was used for 900. Its numeric role was subsequently taken over by the native character Ϣ (''shei'', ), which is related to the Semitic 
, 𐍊)
In the Slavic writing system 
(''tse'', ) was used for 900. It too may have been derived from a form of the Hebrew tsade. In
With the advent of modern printing in the western 
) to shapes with large swash curves (
), while the stems can be almost upright (
) or almost horizontal (
). More rarely, one can find shapes with the lower end curving outwards, forming an "s" curve (
).
In its modern use as a numeral (as with the other two ''episema'', stigma and koppa) no difference is normally made in print between an upper case and lower case form; the same character is typically used in both environments. However, occasionally special typographic variants adapted to an upper case style have also been employed in print. The issue of designing such uppercase variants has become more prominent since the decision of 
). While this form has been adopted in some modern fonts, it has been replaced in more recent versions of Unicode with a simpler glyph, similar to the lowercase forms (
). Many fonts designed for scholarly use have adopted an upright triangular shape with straight lines and serifs (
), as proposed by the typographer Yannis Haralambous. Other versions include large curved shapes (
), or an upright large π-like glyph with a long descending curve (
).
The epigraphic ancient Ionian sampi is not normally rendered with the modern numeral character in print. In specialized , or by a Latin capital serifed T as a makeshift replacement. As this character has in the past never been supported in normal Greek fonts, there is no typographical tradition for its uppercase and lowercase representation in the style of a normal text font. Since its inclusion in the
Several codepoints for the encoding of sampi and its variants have been included in and Pamphylian , with the Ionian character serving as the reference glyph. As of 2010, these characters are not yet supported by most current Greek fonts. The Gothic "900" symbol was encoded in version 3.1 (2001), and Coptic sampi in version 4.1 (2005). Codepoints for the related Greek characters san and Bactrian "'' sho''" were added in version 4.0 (2003).
Prior to Unicode, support for sampi in electronic encoding was marginal. No common 8-bit codepage for Greek (such as ISO 8859-7) contained sampi. However, lowercase and uppercase sampi were provided for by the ISO 5428:1984 ''Greek alphabet coded character set for bibliographic information interchange''. In Beta code, lowercase and uppercase sampi are encoded as "#5" and "*#5" respectively. In the
Ionia
Ionia ( ) was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionians who ...
in Asia Minor
Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
), in the island of Samos
Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...
, in the Ionian colony of Massilia, and in Kyzikos (situated farther north in Asia Minor, in the region of Mysia
Mysia (UK , US or ; ; ; ) was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor (Anatolia, Asian part of modern Turkey). It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lyd ...
). In addition, in the city of Pontic Mesembria, on the Black Sea coast of Thrace
Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...
, it was used on coins, which were marked with the abbreviation of the city's name, spelled "".
Sampi occurs in positions where other dialects, including written Ionic, normally have double sigma (), i.e. a long sound. Some other dialects, particularly Attic Greek
Attic Greek is the Greek language, Greek dialect of the regions of ancient Greece, ancient region of Attica, including the ''polis'' of classical Athens, Athens. Often called Classical Greek, it was the prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige diale ...
, have (long ) in the same words (e.g. vs. 'sea', or vs. 'four'). The sounds in question are all reflexes of the proto-Greek consonant clusters or . It is therefore believed that the local letter sampi was used to denote some kind of intermediate sound during the phonetic change from the earlier plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
clusters towards the later sound, possibly an affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
, forming a triplet with the Greek letters for and .
Among the earliest known uses of sampi in this function is an abecedarium
An abecedarium (also known as an abecedary or ABCs or simply an ABC) is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises.
Non-Latin alphabet ...
from Samos
Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...
dated to the mid-7th century BC. This early attestation already bears witness to its alphabetic position behind omega
Omega (, ; uppercase Ω, lowercase ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numerals, Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value ...
(i.e. not the position of san), and it shows that its invention cannot have been much later than that of omega itself.
The first known use of alphabetic sampi in writing native Greek words is an inscription found on a silver plate in Ephesus
Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...
, which has the words "" ("four") and "" ("forty") spelled with sampi (cf. normal spelling Ionic "" vs. Attic ). It can be dated between the late 7th century and mid 6th century BC. An inscription from Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus ( ; Latin: ''Halicarnassus'' or ''Halicarnāsus''; ''Halikarnāssós''; ; Carian language, Carian: 𐊠𐊣𐊫𐊰 𐊴𐊠𐊥𐊵𐊫𐊰 ''alos k̂arnos'') was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek city in Caria, in Anatolia.
has the names "Ἁλικαρναͳέ ��" ("of the Halicarnassians") and the personal names "Ὀαͳαͳιος" and "Π ��υάͳιος". All of these names appear to be of non-Greek, local origin, i.e. Carian. On a late 6th century bronze plate from Miletus
Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...
dedicated to the sanctuary of Athena
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarde ...
at Assesos
Assesos or Assesus () was a small ancient Greek town in the region of Caria in Asia Minor, in the territory of Miletus, and the site of a sanctuary of Athena Assesia (). It is mentioned by Herodotus in his '' Histories'' (I.18–23) in the context ...
, the spelling "" ("to Athena of Assessos") has been identified. This is currently the first known instance of alphabetic sampi in Miletus itself, commonly assumed to be the birthplace of the numeral system and thus of the later numeric use of sampi.
It has been suggested that there may be an isolated example of the use of alphabetic sampi in Athens. In a famous painted black figure amphora
An amphora (; ; English ) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land ...
from c.615 BC, known as the " Nessos amphora", the inscribed name of the eponymous centaur Nessus is rendered in the irregular spelling . The expected regular form of the name would have been either Attic "" – with a double "τ" – or Ionic "". Traces of corrections that are still visible underneath the painted "Τ" have led to the conjecture that the painter originally wrote , with sampi for the σσ/ττ sound.
Pamphylian sampi
A letter similar to Ionian sampi, but of unknown historical relation with it, existed in the highly deviant local dialect ofPamphylia
Pamphylia (; , ''Pamphylía'' ) was a region in the south of Anatolia, Asia Minor, between Lycia and Cilicia, extending from the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean to Mount Taurus (all in modern-day Antalya province, Turkey). It was bounded on the ...
in southern Asia Minor. It was shaped like . According to Brixhe it probably stood for the sounds , , or . It is found in a few inscriptions in the cities of Aspendos
Aspendos or Aspendus ( Pamphylian: ΕΣΤϜΕΔΥΣ; Attic: Ἄσπενδος) was an ancient Greco-Roman city in Antalya province of Turkey. The site is located 40 km east of the modern city of Antalya.
It was situated on the Eurymedon Ri ...
and Perge as well as on local coins. For instance, an inscription from Perge dated to around 400 BC reads: (=''"Vanássāi Preiíāi Klemútas Lwarámu Vasirwōtas anéthēke"'', "Klemutas the vasirwotas, son of Lwaramus, dedicated this to the Queen of Perge"). The same title "Queen of Perge", the local title for the goddess Artemis
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Artemis (; ) is the goddess of the hunting, hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, Kourotrophos, care of children, and chastity. In later tim ...
, is found on coin legends: . As is known to be the local feminine form of the archaic Greek noun , i.e. '' (w)anax'' ("king"), it is believed that the letter stood for some type of sibilant reflecting Proto-Greek .
Numeric sampi
In the alphabeticnumeral system
A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers; that is, a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using digits or other symbols in a consistent manner.
The same sequence of symbols may represent differe ...
, which was probably invented in Miletus
Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...
and is therefore sometimes called the "Milesian" system, there are 27 numeral signs: the first nine letters of the alphabet, from alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...
(A) to theta
Theta (, ) uppercase Θ or ; lowercase θ or ; ''thē̂ta'' ; Modern: ''thī́ta'' ) is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, derived from the Phoenician letter Teth 𐤈. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 9.
Gree ...
(Θ) stand for the digits 1–9; the next nine, beginning with iota
Iota (; uppercase Ι, lowercase ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and J ...
(Ι), stand for the multiples of ten (10, 20, etc. up to 90); and the last nine, beginning with rho
Rho (; uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; or ) is the seventeenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician letter resh . Its uppercase form uses the same ...
(Ρ), stand for the hundreds (100 – 900). For this purpose, the 24 letters of the standard classical Greek alphabet were used with the addition of three archaic or local letters: digamma
Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an Archaic Greek alphabets, archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6 (number), 6. Whe ...
/''wau'' (Ϝ, , originally denoting the sound ) for "6", koppa (Ϙ, originally denoting the sound ) for "90", and sampi for "900". While digamma and koppa were retained in their original alphabetic positions inherited from Phoenician, the third archaic Phoenician character, san/tsade (Ϻ, denoting an sound), was not used in this way. Instead, sampi was chosen, and added at the end of the system, after omega (800).
From this, it has been concluded that the system must have been invented at a time and place when digamma and koppa were still either in use or at least still remembered as parts of the alphabetic sequence, whereas san had either already been forgotten, or at least was no longer remembered with its original alphabetic position. In the latter case, according to a much debated view, sampi itself may in fact have been regarded as being san, but with a new position in the alphabet.
The dating of the emergence of this system, and with it of numeric sampi, has been the object of much discussion. At the end of the 19th century, authors such as Thompson placed its full development only in the 3rd century BC. Jeffery states that the system as a whole can be traced much further back, into the 6th century BC. An early, though isolated, instance of apparent use of alphabetic Milesian numerals in Athens occurs on a stone inscribed with several columns of two-digit numerals, of unknown meaning, dated from the middle of the 5th century BC.
While the emergence of the system as a whole has thus been given a much earlier dating than was often assumed earlier, actual occurrences of the letter sampi in this context have as yet not been found in any early examples. According to Threatte, the earliest known use of numeric sampi in a stone inscription occurs in an inscription in Magnesia from the 2nd century BC, in a phrase denoting a sum of money (") but the exact numeric meaning of this example is disputed. In Athens, the first attestation is only from the beginning of the 2nd century AD, again in an inscription naming sums of money.
Earlier than the attestations in the full function as a numeral are a few instances where sampi was used in Athens as a mark to enumerate sequences of things in a set, along with the 24 other letters of the alphabet, without implying a specific decimal numeral value. For instance, there is a set of 25 metal tokens, each stamped with one of the letters from alpha to sampi, which are dated to the 4th century BC and were probably used as identification marks for judges in the courts of the Athenian democracy.
In papyrus
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...
texts from the Ptolemaic period onwards, numeric sampi occurs with some regularity.
At an early stage in the papyri, the numeral sampi was used not only for 900, but, somewhat confusingly, also as a multiplicator for 1000, since a way of marking thousands and their multiples was not yet otherwise provided by the alphabetic system. Writing an alpha over sampi ( or, in a ligature, ) meant "1×1000", a theta over sampi () meant "9×1000", and so on. In the examples cited by Gardthausen, a slightly modified shape of sampi, with a shorter right stem (), is used. This system was later simplified into one where the thousands operator was marked just as a small stroke to the left of the letter (͵α = 1000).
Glyph development
In early stone inscriptions, the shape of sampi, both alphabetic and numeric, is. Square-topped shapes, with the middle vertical stroke either of equal length with the outer ones or longer , are also found in early papyri. This form fits the earliest attested verbal description of the shape of sampi as a numeral sign in the ancient literature, which occurs in a remark in the works of the 2nd-century AD physician Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
. Commenting on the use of certain obscure abbreviations found in earlier manuscripts of Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos (; ; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician and philosopher of the Classical Greece, classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referr ...
, Galen says that one of them "looks like the way some people write the sign for 900", and describes this as "the shape of the letter Π with a vertical line in the middle" ("").
From the time of the earliest papyri, the square-topped forms of handwritten sampi alternate with variants where the top is rounded (, ) or pointed (, ). The rounded form also occurs in stone inscriptions in the Roman era. In the late Roman period, the arrow-shaped or rounded forms are often written with a loop connecting the two lines at the right, leading to the "ace-of-spades" form , or to . These forms, in turn, occasionally have another decorative stroke added on the left (). It can be found attached in several different ways, from the top () or the bottom (). From these shapes, finally, the modern form of sampi emerges, beginning in the 9th century, with the two straight lines becoming more or less parallel (, , ).
In medieval western manuscripts describing the Greek alphabet, the arrowhead form is sometimes rendered as .Gardthausen, ''Palaeographie'', p.167.
Origins
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, many authors have assumed that sampi was essentially a historical continuation of the archaic letter '' san'' (), the M-shaped alternative of ''sigma'' (Σ) that formed part of the Greek alphabet when it was originally adopted from Phoenician. Archaic san stood in an alphabetic position between '' pi'' (Π) and '' koppa'' (Ϙ). It dropped out of use in favour of ''sigma'' in most dialects by the 7th century BC, but was retained in place of the latter in a number of local alphabets until the 5th century BC.Jeffery, ''Local Scripts'', p. 33. It is generally agreed to be derived from Phoenician ''tsade
Tsade (also spelled , , , , tzadi, sadhe, tzaddik) is the eighteenth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ṣādē'' 𐤑, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ṣādī'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''� ...
''.
The hypothetical identification between san and sampi is based on a number of considerations. One is the similarity of the sounds represented by both. San represented either simple or some other, divergent phonetic realization of the common Greek phoneme. Suggestions for its original sound value have included , , and . The second reason for the assumption is the systematicity in the development of the letter inventory: there were three archaic letters that dropped out of use in alphabetic writing ('' digamma/wau'', '' koppa'', and san), and three extra-alphabetic letters were adopted for the Milesian numeral system, two of them obviously identical with the archaic digamma and koppa; hence, it is easy to assume that the third in the set had the same history. Objections to this account have been related to the fact that sampi did not assume the same position san had had, and to the lack of any obvious relation between the shapes of the two letters and the lack of any intermediate forms linking the two uses.
Among older authorities, Gardthausen and Thompson took the identity between san and sampi for granted. Foat, in a skeptical reassessment of the evidence, came to the conclusion that it was a plausible hypothesis but unprovable. The discussion has continued until the present, while a steady trickle of new archaeological discoveries regarding the relative dating of the various events involved (i.e. the original emergence of the alphabet, the loss of archaic san, the emergence of alphabetic sampi, and the emergence of the numeral system) have continued to affect the data base on which it is founded.
A part of the discussion about the identity of san and sampi has revolved around a difficult and probably corrupted piece of philological commentary by an anonymous scholiast
Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient au ...
, which has been debated ever since Joseph Justus Scaliger drew attention to it in the mid-17th century. Scaliger's discussion also contains the first known attestation of the name "san pi" (sampi) in the western literature, and the first attempt at explaining it. The passage in question is a ''scholion'' on two rare words occurring in the comedies of Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...
, ''koppatias'' () and ''samphoras'' (). Both were names for certain breeds of horses, and both were evidently named after the letter used as a branding
Branding may refer to:
Physical markings
* Making a mark, typically by charring:
** Wood branding, permanently marking, by way of heat, typically of wood (also applied to plastic, cork, leather, etc.)
** Livestock branding, the marking of animals ...
mark on each: "koppa" and "san" respectively. After explaining this, the anonymous scholiast adds a digression that appears to be meant to further explain the name and function of "san", drawing some kind of link between it and the numeral sign of 900. However, what exactly was meant here is obscure now, because the text was evidently corrupted during transmission and the actual symbols cited in it were probably exchanged. The following is the passage in the reading provided by a modern edition, with problematic words marked:
There is no agreement on what was originally meant by this passage. While Scaliger in the 17th century believed that the scholiast spoke of ''san'' as a synonym for ''sigma'', and meant to describe the (modern) shape of sampi (ϡ) as being composed of an inverted lunate sigma
Sigma ( ; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; ) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as an operator ...
and a π, the modern editor D. Holwerda believes the scholiast spoke of the actual M-shaped san and expressed a belief that modern sampi was related to it.
An alternative hypothesis to that of the historical identity between san and sampi is that Ionian sampi may have been a loan from the neighbouring Anatolian language Carian, which formed the local substrate
Substrate may refer to:
Physical layers
*Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached
** Substrate (aquatic environment), the earthy material that exi ...
in the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. This hypothesis is mentioned by Jeffery and has been supported more recently by Genzardi
Brixhe suggested that sampi could be related to the Carian letter 25 "", transcribed as ''ś''. This would fit in with the "plausible, but not provable" hypothesis that the root contained in the Carian-Greek names spelled with sampi, "Πανυασσις" and "Οασσασσις", is identical with a root *''uś-/waś-'' identified elsewhere in Carian, which contains the Carian ''ś'' sound spelled with . Adiego follows this with the hypothesis that both the Carian letter and sampi could ultimately go back to Greek Ζ (). Like the san–sampi hypothesis, the Carian hypothesis remains an open and controversial issue, especially since the knowledge of Carian itself is still fragmentary and developing.
While the origin of sampi continues to be debated, the identity between the alphabetic Ionian sampi () and the numeral for 900 has rarely been in doubt, although in the older literature it was sometimes mentioned only tentatively,Thompson, ''Handbook'', p.7. An isolated position was expressed in the early 20th century by Jannaris, who – without mentioning the alphabetic use of Ionian – proposed that the shape of numeric sampi was derived from a juxtaposition of three "T"s, i.e. 3×300=900. (He also rejected the historical identity of the other two numerals, stigma (6) and koppa (90), with their apparent alphabetic predecessors.) Today, the link between alphabetic and numeral sampi is universally accepted.
Names
Despite all uncertainties, authors who subscribe to the hypothesis of a historical link between ancient san and sampi also often continue to use the name ''san'' for the latter. Benedict Einarson hypothesizes that it was in fact called *''ssan'', with the special quality of the sibilant sound it had as Ionian. This opinion has been rejected as phonologically impossible by Soldati, who points out that the sound only ever occurred in the middle of words and therefore could not have been used in the beginning of its own name.
As for the name ''sampi'' itself, it is generally agreed today that it is of late origin and not the original name of the character in either its ancient alphabetic or its numeral function. Babiniotis describes it as "medieval", while Jannaris places its emergence "after the thirteenth century". However, the precise time of its emergence in Greek is not documented.
The name is already attested in manuscript copies of an Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...
text describing the development of the alphabet, the treatise ''On Letters'' ascribed to the 9th-century monk Hrabar, which was written first in Glagolitic
The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...
and later transmitted in the Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
. In one medieval Cyrillic group of manuscripts of this text, probably going back to a marginal note in an earlier Glagolitic version, the letter names "sampi" ("") and "koppa" ("") are used for the Greek numerals.Veder, ''Utrum in alterum'', p.133f. Witnesses of this textual variant exist from c.1200, but its archetype can be dated to before 1000 AD.
The first reference to the name ''sampi'' in the western literature occurs in a 17th-century work, Scaliger
The House of Della Scala, whose members were known as Scaligeri () or Scaligers (; from the Latinized ''de Scalis''), was the ruling family of Verona and mainland Veneto (except for Venice) from 1262 to 1387, for a total of 125 years.
History ...
's discussion of the Aristophanes scholion regarding the word ''samphoras'' (see above). Some modern authors, taking Scaliger's reference as the first known use and unaware of earlier attestations, have claimed that the name itself only originated in the 17th centuryThus Keil, ''Halikarnassische Inschrift'', p.265; also Foat, ''Tsade and Sampi'', p.344, and Willi, ''Cows, houses, hooks'', p.420. and/or that Scaliger himself invented it. A related term was used shortly after Scaliger by the French author Montfaucon, who called the sign "" (''antisigma-pi''), "because the Greeks regarded it as being composed of an inverted ''sigma'', which is called , and from " ("Graeci putarunt ex inverso sigma, quod vocatur, et ex compositum esse").
The etymology of ''sampi'' has given rise to much speculation. The only element all authors agree on is that the ''-pi'' refers to the letter π, but about the rest accounts differ depending on each author's stance on the question of the historical identity between sampi and san.
According to the original suggestion by Scaliger, ''san-pi'' means "written like a ''san'' and a ''pi'' together". Here, "san" refers not to the archaic letter san (i.e. Ϻ) itself, but to "san" as a mere synonym of "sigma", referring to the outer curve of the modern ϡ as resembling an inverted lunate sigma
Sigma ( ; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; ) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as an operator ...
. This reading is problematic because it fits the shape only of the modern (late Byzantine) sampi but presupposes active use of an archaic nomenclature that had long since lost currency by the time that shape emerged. According to a second hypothesis, ''san-pi'' would originally have meant "the ''san'' that stands next to ''pi'' in the alphabet". This proposal thus presupposes the historical identity between sampi and ancient san (Ϻ), which indeed stood behind Π. However, this account too is problematic as it implies a very early date of the emergence of the name, since after the archaic period the original position of san was apparently no longer remembered, and the whole point of the use of sampi in the numeral system is that it stands somewhere else. Yet a different hypothesis interprets ''san-pi'' in the sense of "the ''san'' that resembles ''pi''". This is usually taken as referring to the modern ϡ shape, presupposing that the name ''san'' alone had persisted from antiquity until the time the sign took that modern shape. None of these hypotheses has wide support today. The most commonly accepted explanation of the name today is that ''san pi'' () simply means "like a ''pi''", where the word ''san'' is unrelated to any letter name but simply the modern Greek preposition ("like", from ancient Greek ).
In the absence of a proper name, there are indications that various generic terms were used in Byzantine times to refer to the sign. Thus, the 15th-century Greek mathematician Nikolaos Rabdas referred to the three numerals for 6, 90 and 900 as "τὸ ἐπίσημον", "τὸ ἀνώνυμον σημεῖον" ("the nameless sign", i.e. ''koppa''), and "ὁ καλούμενος χαρακτήρ" ("the so-called ''charaktir''", i.e. just "the character"), respectively. The term "ἐπίσημον" (''episēmon'', literally "outstanding") is today used properly as a generic cover term for all three extra-alphabetic numeral signs, but was used specifically to refer to 6 (i.e. ''digamma
Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an Archaic Greek alphabets, archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6 (number), 6. Whe ...
/ stigma'').
In some early medieval Latin documents from western Europe, there are descriptions of the contemporary Greek numeral system which imply that sampi was known simply by the Greek word for its numeric value, ἐννεακόσια (''enneakosia'', "nine hundred"). Thus, in ''De loquela per gestum digitorum'', a didactic text about arithmetics attributed to the Venerable Bede
Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most fa ...
, the three Greek numerals for 6, 90 and 900 are called "episimon", "cophe" and "enneacosis" respectively. the latter two being evidently corrupted versions of ''koppa'' and ''enneakosia''. An anonymous 9th-century manuscript from Rheinau Abbey has ''epistmon'' , ''kophe,'' and ''ennakose''. Similarly, the ''Psalterium Cusanum'', a 9th or 10th century bilingual Greek—Latin manuscript, has ''episimôn'', ''enacôse'' and ''cophê'' respectively (with the latter two names mistakenly interchanged for each other.) Another medieval manuscript has the same words distorted somewhat more, as ''psima'', ''coppo'' and ''enacos'',''The Bodleian quarterly record'' 3 (1923), p.96 Other, similar versions of the name include ''enacosin'' and ''niacusin'', or the curious corruption ''sincope'',
A curious name for sampi that occurs in one Greek source is "παρακύϊσμα" (''parakyisma''). It occurs in a ''scholion'' to Dionysius Thrax
Dionysius Thrax ( ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a st ...
, where the three numerals are referred to as "τὸ δίγαμμα καὶ τὸ κόππα καὶ τό καλούμενον παρακύϊσμα". The obscure word ("… the so-called ''parakyisma''") literally means "a spurious pregnancy", from "παρα-" and the verb "κυέω" "to be pregnant". The term has been used and accepted as possibly authentic by Jannaris, Uhlhorn and again by Soldati. While Jannaris hypothesizes that it was meant to evoke the oblique, reclining shape of the character, Soldati suggests it was meant to evoke its status as an irregular, out-of-place addition ("un'utile superfetazione"). Einarson, however, argues that the word is probably the product of textual corruption during transmission in the Byzantine period. He suggests that the original reading was similar to that used by Rabdas, "ὁ καλούμενος χαρακτήρ" ("the so-called character"). Another contemporary cover term for the extra-alphabetic numerals would have been "παράσημον" (''parasēmon'', lit. "extra sign"). A redactor could have written the consonant letters "π-σ-μ" of "παράσημον" over the letters "χ-κτ-ρ" of "χαρακτήρ", as both words happen to share their remaining intermediate letters. The result, mixed together from letters of both words, could have been misread in the next step as "παρακυησμ", and hence, "παρακύϊσμα".
An entirely new proposal has been made by A. Willi, who suggests that the original name of the letter in ancient Greek was ''angma'' (). This proposal is based on a passage in a Latin grammarian, Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Virgil and Cicero). He is sometimes call ...
, who uses this name for what he calls a "25th letter" of the alphabet. Varro himself is clearly not referring to sampi, but is using ''angma'' to refer to the ''ng'' sound in words like ''angelus''. However, Varro ascribes the use of the name ''angma'' to an ancient Ionian Greek author, Ion of Chios
Ion of Chios (; ; c. 490/480 – c. 420 BC) was a Greek writer, dramatist, lyric poet and philosopher. He was a contemporary of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. Of his many plays and poems only a few titles and fragments have survived. He also ...
. Willi conjectures that Varro misunderstood Ion, believing the name ''angma'' referred to the sound because that sound happened to occur in the name itself. However, Ion, in speaking of a "25th letter of the alphabet", meant not just a different pronunciation of some other letters but an actual written letter in its own right, namely sampi. According to Willi's hypothesis, the name ''angma'' would have been derived from the verbal root *''ank-'', "to bend, curve", and referred to a "crooked object", used because of the hook-like shape of the letter.
In other scripts
In the Greco–Iberian alphabet, used during the 4th century BC in eastern Spain to write the Iberian language
The Iberian language is the language of an indigenous western European people identified by Ancient Greece, Greek and ancient Rome, Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian Peninsula in the pre-Migration Era ...
(a language unrelated to Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
), sampi was adopted along with the rest of the Ionian Greek alphabet, as an alphabetic character to write a second sibilant sound distinct from sigma. It had the shape , with three vertical lines of equal length.
Its pronunciation is uncertain, but it is transliterated as .
The Greek script was also adapted in Hellenistic times to write the Iranian
Iranian () may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Iran
** Iranian diaspora, Iranians living outside Iran
** Iranian architecture, architecture of Iran and parts of the rest of West Asia
** Iranian cuisine, cooking traditions and practic ...
language Bactrian, spoken in today's Afghanistan. Bactrian used an additional letter " sho"(Ϸ), shaped like the later (unrelated) Germanic letter "thorn" (Þ), to denote its ''sh'' sound (''š'', ). This letter, too, has been hypothesized to be a continuation of Greek sampi, and/or san.
During the first millennium AD, several neighboring languages whose alphabets were wholly or partly derived from the Greek adopted the structure of the Greek numeral system, and with it, some version or local replacement of sampi.
In Coptic, the sign "Ⳁ" (, which has been described as "the Greek with a Ρ above"), was used for 900. Its numeric role was subsequently taken over by the native character Ϣ (''shei'', ), which is related to the Semitic tsade
Tsade (also spelled , , , , tzadi, sadhe, tzaddik) is the eighteenth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ṣādē'' 𐤑, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ṣādī'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''� ...
(and thus, ultimately, cognate with Greek san as well).
The Gothic alphabet
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language. It was developed in the 4th century AD by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), a Gothic preacher of Cappadocian Greek descent, for the purpose of translating the Bible.
The alphabet e ...
adopted sampi in its Roman-era form of an upwards-pointing arrow (, 𐍊)
In the Slavic writing system Glagolitic
The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...
, the letter (''tse'', ) was used for 900. It too may have been derived from a form of the Hebrew tsade. In Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
, in contrast, the character (''small yus'', ) was used initially, being the one among the native Cyrillic letters that resembled sampi most closely in shape. However, the letter (''tse''), the equivalent of the Glagolitic sign, took its place soon later. It has been proposed that sampi was retained in its alternative function of denoting multiplication by thousand, and became the Cyrillic "thousands sign" .
In Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...
, the letter Ջ (''ǰ'') stands for 900, while Ք (''kʿ''), similar in shape to the Coptic sign, stands for 9000.
Modern use
Together with the other elements of the Greek numeral system, sampi is occasionally still used in Greek today. However, since the system is typically used only to enumerate items in relatively small sets, such as the chapters of a book or the names of rulers in a dynasty, the signs for the higher tens and hundreds, including sampi, are much less frequently found in practice than the lower letters for 1 to 10. One of the few domains where higher numbers including thousands and hundreds are still expressed in the old system in Greece with some regularity is the field of law, because until 1914 laws were numbered in this way. For instance, one law which happens to have sampi in its name and is still in force and relatively often referred to is "Νόμος ͵ΓϠΝʹ/1911" (i.e. Law Number 3950 of 1911), "Περί της εκ των αυτοκινήτων ποινικής και αστικής ευθύνης" ("About penal and civil responsibility arising from the use of automobiles"). However, in informal practice, the letter sampi is often replaced in such instances by a lowercase or uppercase π.Typography
With the advent of modern printing in the western Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
, printers adopted the minuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
version of the numeral sign, ϡ, for their fonts. The typographic realization of Sampi has varied widely throughout its history in print, and a large range of different shapes can still be found in current electronic typesetting. Commonly used forms range from small, π-like shapes () to shapes with large swash curves (), while the stems can be almost upright () or almost horizontal (). More rarely, one can find shapes with the lower end curving outwards, forming an "s" curve ().
In its modern use as a numeral (as with the other two ''episema'', stigma and koppa) no difference is normally made in print between an upper case and lower case form; the same character is typically used in both environments. However, occasionally special typographic variants adapted to an upper case style have also been employed in print. The issue of designing such uppercase variants has become more prominent since the decision of Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
to encode separate character codepoints for uppercase and lowercase sampi. Several different designs are currently found. Older versions of the Unicode charts showed a glyph with a crooked and thicker lower stem (). While this form has been adopted in some modern fonts, it has been replaced in more recent versions of Unicode with a simpler glyph, similar to the lowercase forms (). Many fonts designed for scholarly use have adopted an upright triangular shape with straight lines and serifs (), as proposed by the typographer Yannis Haralambous. Other versions include large curved shapes (), or an upright large π-like glyph with a long descending curve ().
The epigraphic ancient Ionian sampi is not normally rendered with the modern numeral character in print. In specialized epigraphical
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
or palaeographic academic discussion, it is either represented by a glyph , or by a Latin capital serifed T as a makeshift replacement. As this character has in the past never been supported in normal Greek fonts, there is no typographical tradition for its uppercase and lowercase representation in the style of a normal text font. Since its inclusion in the Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
character encoding standard, experimental typographical stylizations of a lowercase textual Sampi have been developed. The Unicode reference glyph for "small letter archaic sampi", according to an original draft, was to have looked like the stem of a small τ with a square top at x height, but was changed after consultation with Greek typesetting experts. The glyph shown in current official code charts stands on the baseline and has an ascender slightly higher than cap height
In typography, cap height is the height of a capital letter above the baseline for a particular typeface
A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing ...
, but its stem has no serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
s and is slightly curved leftwards like the descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a grapheme that extends below the Baseline (typography), baseline of a typeface, font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal li ...
of an ρ or β. Most type designers who have implemented the character in current fonts have chosen to design a glyph either at x height, or with a descender but no ascender, and with the top either square or curved (corresponding to ancient scribal practice.)
Computer encoding
Several codepoints for the encoding of sampi and its variants have been included in Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
. As they were adopted successively in different versions of Unicode, their coverage in current computer fonts and operating systems is inconsistent as of 2010. U+03E0 ("Greek letter Sampi") was present from version 1.1 (1993) and was originally meant to show the normal modern numeral glyph. The uppercase/lowercase contrast was introduced with version 3.0 (1999). As the existing code point had been technically defined as an uppercase character, the new addition was declared lowercase (U+03E1, "Greek small letter Sampi"). This has led to some inconsistency between fonts, because the glyph that was present at U+03E0 in older fonts is now usually found at U+03E1 in newer ones, while U+03E0 may have a typographically uncommon capital glyph.
New, separate codepoints for ancient epigraphic sampi, also in an uppercase and lowercase variant, were proposed in 2005, and included in the standard with version 5.1 (2008). They are meant to cover both the Ionian and Pamphylian , with the Ionian character serving as the reference glyph. As of 2010, these characters are not yet supported by most current Greek fonts. The Gothic "900" symbol was encoded in version 3.1 (2001), and Coptic sampi in version 4.1 (2005). Codepoints for the related Greek characters san and Bactrian "'' sho''" were added in version 4.0 (2003).
Prior to Unicode, support for sampi in electronic encoding was marginal. No common 8-bit codepage for Greek (such as ISO 8859-7) contained sampi. However, lowercase and uppercase sampi were provided for by the ISO 5428:1984 ''Greek alphabet coded character set for bibliographic information interchange''. In Beta code, lowercase and uppercase sampi are encoded as "#5" and "*#5" respectively. In the LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...
typesetting system, the "Babel" package allows accessing lowercase and uppercase sampi through the commands "\sampi" and "\Sampi". Non-Unicode (8-bit) fonts for polytonic Greek
Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography (), which includes five diacritics, notates Ancient Greek phonology. The simpler monotonic orthography (), introduce ...
sometimes contained sampi mapped to arbitrary positions, but usually not as a casing pair. For instance, the "WP Greek Century" font that came with WordPerfect
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...
had sampi encoded as 0xFC, while the popular "Wingreek" fonts had it encoded as 0x22. No encoding system prior to Unicode 5.1 catered for archaic epigraphic sampi separately.
References
Sources
* {{Greek language Greek letters