Greek, Hebrew & Samaritan Fonts
for Masonic Scholars
by Bro. Shawn Eyer , Orinda Lodge No. 122 F. & A. M.
Those engaged in serious writing about Freemasonry have often required unusual typefaces. Although today's Masonic rituals are not replete with ancient languages, much Masonic literature does feature ancient script. Hebrew and Greek appear on many old Masonic documents. Valuable resources such as Mackey's Encyclopędia of Freemasonry and Pike's Morals and Dogma refer frequently to ancient languages. Possessing the fonts necessary to reproduce these scripts can be valuable for Masonic research and personal edification.
Scholars Press Hebrew & Greek
http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/fonts/Scholars Press is a defunct publisher of monographs in the field of religious studies. SP created a series of freeware ancient language fonts for use on the Internet as well as in print. The Scholars Press fonts are well-mapped and of very good quality.
There are Scholars Press fonts for Hebrew, Greek, Coptic and Syriac, as well as a nice font for English transliteration. For a complete archive of the Scholars Press fonts for both PC and Macintosh, see the link above. Here at Orinda Lodge, we have mirrored the PC versions of the two fonts most likely to be used by Masons. These fonts are copyright © 2000 by James R. Adair.
SPIonic - Fully-accented (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae encoding) Greek (13k zip)
SPTiberian - Fully-pointed (Michigan-Claremont encoding) Hebrew (9k zip)
Samaritan Alphabet
The Samaritan alphabet was derived from the Old Hebrew alphabet by the Samaritans, a tribe originally from Mesopotamia who moved to Palestine at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC and adopted the Jewish religion and culture. This alphabet is still used by a few Samaritans in the city of Nablus.
Note: The Samaritan font linked to on this page was created by Bro. Shawn Eyer (shawn@orindalodge.org). The letters are based on those found in the Masonic writings of Albert Pike 33° (1809-1891). One of the alterations which Albert Pike made in his revised edition of the rituals of the Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite is that he changed most of the Hebrew script from the standard "square" form to the older Samaritan lettering. Masons who have searched in vain for a font to represent these characters are welcome to download and use Kadosh Samaritan, a Windows TrueType font.
Free Samaritan font:
http://www.orindalodge.org/kadoshsamaritan.php
