Old Persian Text in Miyazaki's "Laputa, the Castle in the Sky"
By Matthieu on Tuesday, December 4 2018, 17:00 - Permalink
Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 anime "Castle in the Sky" uses old Persian cuneiform script for the design of Laputa civilization.
The Ghibli museum at Mitaka also features a cube with a text which I have transcribed and tried to analyse...
The text on the Mitaka cube has no vertical alignment, the text is justified on both sides.
PDF version to zoom in the text.
XLSX file with other texts (needs to install the TTF font, see below)
It contains alphabetic padding sequences shown in grey filling. These sequence follow the traditional order of letters, with the exception of syllable "Du" and letter "L". Here is the old Persian syllabary:
Other repeated sequences are found. Fixed typo in green, meaningless characters in red. Ideograms and fullstops in blue filling.
I found no real Japanese, but neither the little old Persian I know. The best candidates are the red sequence at b26: "Maathakaith kudaasai" and the orange at c12: "Tanusikaatta".
- This study makes use of the old Persian type font prepared in 2011.
- 2018 discussion on the conlanger forum l'Atelier
- 2019 Facebook article on Omniglot group