Elymaic Letter Pe

It is Elymaic Pe, conventionally transliterated with p.

Elymaic Pe belongs to an Aramaic-derived script used in Elymais, an ancient region in southwestern Iran. The script is an abjad—a writing system that mainly records consonants—and runs right to left. The surviving evidence records no native Elymaic letter names, so scholars use “Pe” from the Aramaic alphabet.

Elymaic served local administration, royal display, and coin legends, the inscriptions stamped on coins. It flourished in Elymais from the second century BCE to early third century CE. Inscriptions at Tang-e Sarvak come from a sacred grove associated with royal coronations. Tang-e Chilau graffiti may preserve a transition from chancery Aramaic—the formal script used by officials—to Elymaic by the first century BCE or earlier; the main stone-inscription evidence dates from the first through third centuries CE. Later coin series switch between Greek and Aramaic, while some small copper issues may instead use the Parthian script.

Why does 𐿰 look different in different fonts?

The outline can vary; the encoded letter stays the same.

The 2017 Unicode proposal based its representative form on Tang-e Sarvak inscriptions and notes that local letter shapes vary. A font can show a different historical style without changing the character. A box means the selected font lacks an Elymaic glyph.

Elymaic runs right to left, and its letters do not join. If text appears in the wrong order, check whether the editor handles bidirectional text; the display problem does not make 𐿰 a different letter.