Boustrophedon (, “ox-turning” from , , “ox” , , , “turn” and the adverbial suffix -, "like, in the manner of"; that is, turning like
oxen in
ploughing) is a kind of
bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient
manuscripts and other
inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters. Rather than going left-to-right as in modern
English, or right-to-left as in
Arabic and
Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a common way of writing in stone in
Ancient Greece.