Multiocular O () is a rare
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
variant of the
Cyrillic letter
O. This glyph variant can be found in a single 15th century manuscript, in the
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
phrase "серафими многꙮ҄читїи" (, "many-eyed
seraph
A seraph (, "burning one"; plural seraphim ) is a type of celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Chris ...
im"). It was documented by
Yefim Karsky
Yefim Fyodorovich Karsky ( be, Яўхім Фёдаравіч Карскі, Jaŭchim Fiodaravič Karski, russian: Ефим Фёдорович Карский; russian: Евфимий Феодорович Карский, older name form) (1 January 1 ...
from a copy of the book of
Psalms
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...
from around 1429, now found in the collection of the
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
The character was proposed for inclusion into
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
in 2007 and incorporated as character U+A66E in Unicode version 5.1 (2008). The representative glyph had seven eyes. However, in 2021, following a
tweet highlighting the character, it came to linguist
Michael Everson
Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006.
Hi ...
's attention that the character in the 1429 manuscript was actually made up of ten eyes. After a 2022 proposal to change the character to reflect this, it was updated later that year for Unicode 15.0 to have ten eyes.
See also
*
O (Cyrillic)
O (О о; italics: ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
O commonly represents the close-mid back rounded vowel , like the pronunciation of in Scottish English "go".
History
The Cyrillic letter O was derived from the Greek letter Omicron ...
, О
*
Monocular O
Monocular O (majuscule: , minuscule: ) is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyph variant was used in certain manuscripts in the root word (eye), and also in some other functions, for example, in the word- and syllable-init ...
, Ꙩ
*
Binocular O
Binocular O (majuscule: , minuscule: ) is one of the exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the plural or dual forms of the root word eye, like .
A similar jocular glyph (called "doubl ...
, Ꙫ
*
Double monocular O
Double monocular O ( uppercase: , lowercase: ) is one of the exotic glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the plural or dual forms of the word eye, for example " woeyes". They were in ...
, Ꙭ
*
Double O (Cyrillic)
Double O is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is found in some early Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, ...
, Ꚙ
*
Crossed O, Ꚛ
*
Cyrillic script in Unicode
References
{{Reflist
O
Cyrillic letters
Language and mysticism
Eyes in culture
Angels in Christianity
Grammatical number