Carian Letter Nn

It represents a nasal n sound within a Carian word. Modern scholarly transliteration writes it ñ; reported readings include an n that forms a syllable on its own and a word-final n that stops without a separate release sound. Here ñ is a Latin-letter transcription, not the Carian glyph or a claim that it has the Spanish ñ sound.

The script was used in Caria, in southwestern Anatolia, and by Carian communities in Egypt. The oldest known Carian inscription is on a 7th century BCE figurine of Isis and includes Pharaoh Psammeticus I's name. Surviving texts include tomb and offering inscriptions, decrees, names, and graffiti.

Carian was an Indo-European language of Anatolia, related to Lycian, Lydian, and Luwian. Its alphabet is linked to Greek script, though similar-looking letters can represent different sounds and the exact Greek source is uncertain. Caria usually wrote left-to-right without spaces; Egyptian Carian usually ran right-to-left, with local sign forms varying by place. John D. Ray made an early step in decoding the script in 1981; in 1993, Ignacio J. Adiego and Diether Schürr independently worked out many sound values using bilingual texts found in Egypt.

Why can 𐊳 appear as a box?

The active font may not contain a Carian glyph. The character can still be present in the text while an application shows a replacement box because its font lacks the shape.