Monochrome Syllabary
The monochrome syllabary was the oldest form of the script. It was originally written by filling in various cells of a matrix representing the seven cells of the honeycomb pattern; the white color of this filling represented bee larvae. The matrices were laid down in red ink on blank papyrus by famuli of the wizard and allowed to dry before being written on. Because there were seven cells in the matrix, each of which could be filled or unfilled, the syllabary had 127 characters, or 27-1 (at least one cell had to be filled, reducing the total number of characters by one).
* = empty matrix
** = Queen Bee
*** = Hive
Each character also had a numeric value and an ideographic value, listed in the appendix, and some literary effects employed in the wizard’s scriptures depended on simultaneous use of the phonetic and ideographic values of the characters. The script later developed by dropping the matrix and filling the central cell in all characters, with aspiration indicated either by a dot in one of the unfilled cells, representing an egg or a just-hatched larva, or by filling the central cell with yellow, representing honey. The bi-color form of this developed script was written with a two-ended stylus.
Honey-vowel Syllabary
The honey-vowel syllabary was written with a two-ended stylus in two colors. Vowels were written in yellow, representing honey, and consonants in white, representing larvae in a cell. As for the older form, it also could be written without a matrix using dots or honeyed central cells to represent aspiration.
Linear Syllabary
The linear syllabary, which existed in several forms, was based on lines drawn from the center of one cell to the center of a neighboring cell. The first character in the basic linear syllabary that follows is written against a matrix to illustrate this method of character formation.
The linear syllabary had considerable room for expansion, being later used for foreign sounds and “runic” divination, and giving birth to a family of alphabets and further syllabaries.