| The Emporer Charlemagne may not have been able to write his own name, but his unification of Europe and the renaissance which followed eventually gave us the letterform which you are reading now, on this page. He was a Frank living in the eighth century but his crown was studded with cornelians from classical Rome, and his throne from Aachen was carried there from the islands of Greece. His wife was the daughter of Offa, the English king of Mercia, who may have been illiterate too. At any rate it is unlikely that Offa realized, when he had the design of an Arab dinar copied for his own gold coins , that around his title, "Offa Rex" were written the words, "Mohammed is the prophet of God," in Kufic script. |
