Old Italic Letter Em

It is the Old Italic alphabet’s m-letter.

Greek settlers brought an alphabet from Euboea, a Greek island, to southern Italy and Etruria in the 8th century BCE. Etruscan writers adapted it, and writing spread through elite and trade contacts. Inscriptions could mark prices or ownership, dedicate objects, and name people buried in tombs.

Etruscan writing is attested by about 700 BCE. An ivory alphabet tablet from Marsiliana d’Albegna, dated about 650 BCE, gives scholars an early model for letter shapes.

how did 𐌌 reach Latin?

The writing tradition passed through Etruscan to Latin.

“Old Italic” names related alphabets used for several languages in ancient Italy. Etruscan took its alphabet from Greek, while Roman Latin developed from a southern Etruscan model. As Rome took control of Italy, Latin gradually replaced Etruscan writing.

“Em” is a scholarly reconstruction: no ancient source records this letter’s name. The Unicode Standard 17.0 also notes a theory that Romans borrowed Etruscan letter names with the alphabet; scholars infer those names from a pattern in which Etruscan consonant names began with an e sound.

why can 𐌌 face the other way?

Regional letter forms and text direction can change its orientation.

Old Italic includes related alphabets for different languages, and their letter shapes can vary. A font may therefore need a language-specific form.

Etruscan texts from the 7th to 1st centuries BCE usually ran right to left, though some early examples ran left to right. The Unicode Standard 17.0 sets Old Italic left to right by default for modern scholarly layout; when text is deliberately set right to left, fonts should mirror its letters.