Script

I had the pleasure of having dr. Fritte Cornelius over for a visit. He did not simply make a social call - he brought a riddle. He had come across some ancient alphabet or code.

The symbols are not pictograms or icons or hieroglyphs. For that, there are not enough different ones. They are not phonemes or syllable tokens either: there are the same number as in a regular alphabet. By frequency analysis and decryption algorithms, the different symbols were found to correspond to letters in our own alphabet:

The greyed out letters are uncertain, and inferred from similarities found in a different sets of letter symbols. It could be a block script, usually encountered in either primitive civilizations who use square wooden or lead blocks (or potatoes, even) that are carved, then inked and then pressed on paper or stamped. Straight lines are easier to carve than curved ones, hence the absence of curvy lines or wiggles.

The other possibility is a spray-template font. For those the idea is that the places where the ink should come are cut out of a template; the template is placed over the surface to be written on, and the paint is applied over the template. This is used in military or mercantile applications: crates or equipment can be easily marked via spraying paint on such a template.

The idea then is that the letters are such that the template should not fall apart. The only non-grey letters that give a problem in that respect are the H and G form: they have a little white triangle inside the green that is not connected to the rest of the white, at least not clearly visible. None of the other letters have disconnected white pieces.

So, either block stamp letters or spray paint template letters, and an alphabet with possibly only 21 symbols if the grey ones are not present. The only other clue is the text that dr. Cornelius came across: a quote from Epitoth: "Their power being mighty and their presence potent the people were wise not to look too closely upon them." 

That seems to suggest it might be some alphabet from somewhere in the Empire. There have been many over its various millennia and its vast space. A quick first search reveals no match, though...