Cistercian Ciphers

Inspiration: (1) The Hungarian-monk-founded Cistercian school I went to in Texas and (2) the code and cool project page on Cistercian numerals by Ákos Nikházy

Description: It turns out the Cistercians (an order of Catholic monks) created a numeric system that could represent the numbers 1 - 9999. The ciphers have nice symmetry and, with some practice, become quick to read. I annotated them up top to show the locations of the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. A quick clickthrough has a fun sort of stick-figure flipbook aesthetic. Probably what they were going for with these runes...

Legend

Sources

Ákos Nikházy - canvas code