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122-449: The literary corpus of the dindsenchas comprises about 176 poems plus a number of prose commentaries and independent prose tales (the so-called "prose dindsenchas " is often distinguished from the "verse", "poetic" or "metrical dindsenchas "). As a compilation the dindsenchas has survived in two different recensions . The first recension is found in the Book of Leinster , a manuscript of

244-438: A compromise between the beauty and legibility of the capitals and the rapidity of the cursive, and is clearly an artificial product. It was certainly in existence by the latter part of the 4th century, for a number of manuscripts of that date are written in perfect uncial hands ( Exempla , pl. XX). It presently supplanted the capitals and appears in numerous manuscripts which have survived from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, when it

366-579: A few more centuries. In north India, Prakrit was replaced by Sanskrit by the end of the 3rd century, while this change took place about a century later in south India. Some of the inscriptions though written in Prakrit, were influenced by Sanskrit and vice versa. The epigraphs of the Kushana kings are found in a mixture of Prakrit and Sanskrit, while the Mathura inscriptions of the time of Sodasa, belonging to

488-402: A general resemblance (with considerable differences in detail) both to the minuscule cursive of late papyri, and to those used in modern Greek type; uncial forms were avoided. In the course of the 10th century the hand, without losing its beauty and exactness, gained in freedom. Its finest period was from the 9th to the 12th century, after which it rapidly declined. The development was marked by

610-419: A hand more precisely than a range of at least seventy or eighty years". In a 2005 e-mail addendum to his 1996 "The Paleographical Dating of P-46" paper Bruce W. Griffin stated "Until more rigorous methodologies are developed, it is difficult to construct a 95% confidence interval for [ New Testament ] manuscripts without allowing a century for an assigned date." William Schniedewind went even further in

732-499: A hierarchy of texts in a suite through discourse analysis, determining the provenance of texts, identifying forgeries , interpolations and recensions with precision; eliciting a professional authenticity in documentation, textual and manuscript evaluation with view to producing a critical edition if required and a critical assessment of a given discourse event as rendered and set in a materiality or medium. Knowledge of writing materials and discourse material production systems

854-459: A lesser extent ⟨A⟩ ( ⟨α⟩ ). The earliest Greek papyrus yet discovered is probably that containing the Persae of Timotheus , which dates from the second half of the 4th century BC and its script has a curiously archaic appearance. ⟨E⟩ , ⟨Σ⟩ , and ⟨Ω⟩ have the capital form, and apart from these test letters the general effect

976-415: A minuscule hand. Although the characteristic forms of the uncial type appear to have their origin in the early cursive, the two hands are nevertheless quite distinct. The uncial is a libraria , closely related to the capital writing, from which it differs only in the rounding off of the angles of certain letters, principally [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] . It represents

1098-402: A new type of hand, the minuscule , which originated in the 8th century, as an adaptation to literary purposes of the second of the types of Byzantine cursive mentioned above. A first attempt at a calligraphic use of this hand, seen in one or two manuscripts of the 8th or early 9th century, in which it slopes to the right and has a narrow, angular appearance, did not find favour, but by the end of

1220-520: A number of inscriptions belonging to the dynasties of Pallava, Chola and Pandya are found. These records are written in three different scripts known as Tamil , Vattezhuttu and Grantha scripts , the last variety being used to write Sanskrit inscriptions. In the Kerala region, the Vattezhuttu script developed into a still more cursive script called Kolezhuthu during the 14th and 15th centuries. At

1342-461: A pen. In cutting a hard surface, it is easier to form angles than curves; in writing the reverse is the case; hence the development of writing was from angular letters ("capitals") inherited from epigraphic style to rounded ones ("uncials"). But only certain letters were affected by this development, in particular ⟨E⟩ (uncial ⟨ε⟩ ), ⟨Σ⟩ ( ⟨c⟩ ), ⟨Ω⟩ ( ⟨ω⟩ ), and to

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1464-432: A rather broken appearance, part of one character being often made separately from the rest and linked to the next letter. A form characteristic of the 1st and 2nd century and surviving after that only as a fraction sign (= 1 ⁄ 8 ) is ⟨η⟩ in the shape [REDACTED] . By the end of the 1st century, there had been developed several excellent types of cursive, which, though differing considerably both in

1586-502: A register in each given dialect and language has evolved constantly, it is necessary to know how to decipher its individual substantive, occurrence make-up and constituency. For example, assessing its characters and typology as they existed in various places, times and locations. In addition, for hand-written texts, scribes often use many abbreviations , and annotations so as to functionally aid speed, efficiency and ease of writing and in some registers to importantly save invaluable space of

1708-561: A similar series found at Verespatak in Transylvania ( CIL , iii) and a number of papyri. From a study of a number of documents which exhibit transitional forms, it appears that this cursive was originally simplified capital writing. The evolution was so rapid, however, that at quite an early date the scriptura epistolaris of the Roman world can no longer be described as capitals. By the 1st century, this kind of writing began to develop

1830-404: A single curve. The cursive writing thus foreshadows the specifically uncial forms. The same specimens show great inequality in the height of the letters; the main strokes are prolonged upwards ( [REDACTED] = ⟨b⟩ ; [REDACTED] = ⟨d⟩ ) or downwards ( [REDACTED] = ⟨q⟩ ; [REDACTED] = 's ). In this direction, the cursive tends to become

1952-472: A sixth volume, which focused on placename research and scholarship. recension Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts , this may be a revision by another author. The term is derived from the Latin recensio ("review, analysis"). In textual criticism (as is the case with Biblical scholarship ), the count noun recension

2074-456: A tendency But from the first there were several styles, varying from the formal, regular hands characteristic of service books to the informal style, marked by numerous abbreviations, used in manuscripts intended only for a scholar's private use. The more formal hands were exceedingly conservative, and there are few classes of script more difficult to date than the Greek minuscule of this class. In

2196-410: A text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and printing of texts, manuscripts, books , codices and tomes, tracts and monographs , etcetera, were produced, and

2318-490: Is a family of manuscripts sharing similar traits; for example, the Alexandrian text-type may be referred to as the "Alexandrian recension". The term recension may also refer to the process of collecting and analyzing source texts in order to establish a tree structure leading backward to a hypothetical original text. "An adequate method of recension has only been rendered possible by the growth of Palaeography , i.e.

2440-434: Is a gradual decline in the subcontinent of such disciplines as palaeography, epigraphy and numismatics . The discipline of ancient Indian scripts and the languages they are written needs new scholars who, by adopting traditional palaeographic methods and modern technology, may decipher, study and transcribe the various types of epigraphs and legends still extant today. The language of the earliest written records, that is,

2562-407: Is a round, upright hand seen, for example, in a British Museum papyrus containing Odyssey III. The cross-stroke of ⟨ε⟩ is high, ⟨Μ⟩ deeply curved and ⟨Α⟩ has the form ⟨α⟩ . Uniformity of size is well attained, and a few strokes project, and these but slightly, above or below the line. Another type, well called by palaeographer Schubart

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2684-497: Is called the Byzantine period, that is, roughly from AD 300 to 650, is known as the biblical hand. It went back to at least the end of the 2nd century and had had originally no special connection with Christian literature . In both vellum and paper manuscripts from 4th-century Egypt are other forms of script, particularly a sloping, rather inelegant hand derived from the literary hand of the 3rd century, which persisted until at least

2806-459: Is carried to an extreme. In a letter of the prefect, dated in 209, we have a fine example of the Chancery hand , with tall and laterally compressed letters, ⟨ο⟩ very narrow and ⟨α⟩ and ⟨ω⟩ often written high in the line. This style, from at least the latter part of the 2nd century, exercised considerable influence on the local hands, many of which show

2928-411: Is carried very far, the linking of letters reaching the point of illegibility, and the characters sloping to the right. ⟨A⟩ is reduced to a mere acute angle ( ⟨∠⟩ ), ⟨T⟩ has the cross-stroke only on the left, ⟨ω⟩ becomes an almost straight line, ⟨H⟩ acquires a shape somewhat like h , and the last stroke of ⟨N⟩

3050-546: Is difficult to trace, as there are few examples, mostly not datable on external grounds. Only for the 3rd century BC have we a secure basis. The hands of that period have an angular appearance; there is little uniformity in the size of individual letters, and though sometimes, notably in the Petrie papyrus containing the Phaedo of Plato , a style of considerable delicacy is attained, the book-hand in general shows less mastery than

3172-401: Is extended far upwards and at times flattened out until it is little more than a diagonal stroke to the right. The attempt to secure a horizontal line along the top is here abandoned. This style was not due to inexpertness, but to the desire for speed, being used especially in accounts and drafts, and was generally the work of practised writers. How well established the cursive hand had now become

3294-435: Is foundational to the study of handwriting and printing events and to the identification of the periods in which a document or manuscript may have been produced. An important goal may be to assign the text a date and a place of origin, or determining which translations of a text are produced from which specific document or manuscript. This is why the palaeographer and attendant semiologists and philologists must take into account

3416-527: Is known as the Cave character , and their script differs from the Northern version in being more angular. Most of the modern scripts of South India have evolved from this script, with the exception of Vatteluttu , the exact origins of which are unknown, and Nandinagari , which is a variant of Devanagari that developed due to later Northern influence. In south India from the 7th century of the common era onwards,

3538-494: Is made by the few other papyri, chiefly literary, dating from about 300 BC; ⟨E⟩ may be slightly rounded, ⟨Ω⟩ approach the uncial form, and the angular ⟨Σ⟩ occurs as a letter only in the Timotheus papyrus, though it survived longer as a numeral (= 200), but the hands hardly suggest that for at least a century and a half the art of writing on papyrus had been well established. Yet before

3660-480: Is not much later, the letters are larger and more heavily made; in the 5th-century Alexandrinus , a later development is seen with emphatic distinction of thick and thin strokes. By the 6th century, alike in vellum and in papyrus manuscripts, the heaviness had become very marked, though the hand still retained, in its best examples, a handsome appearance; but after this it steadily deteriorated, becoming ever more mechanical and artificial. The thick strokes grew heavier;

3782-521: Is of great interest as being the ancestor of the type called (from its later occurrence in vellum codices of the Bible ) the biblical hand. This, which can be traced back at least the late 2nd century, has a square, rather heavy appearance; the letters, of uniform size, stand upright, and thick and thin strokes are well distinguished. In the 3rd century the book-hand, like the cursive, appears to have deteriorated in regularity and stylistic accomplishment. In

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3904-405: Is one of stiffness and angularity. More striking is the hand of the earliest dated papyrus, a contract of 311 BC. Written with more ease and elegance, it shows little trace of any development towards a truly cursive style; the letters are not linked, and though the uncial ⟨c⟩ is used throughout, ⟨E⟩ and ⟨Ω⟩ have the capital forms. A similar impression

4026-495: Is opposed to the minuscule, based on a system of four lines, with letters of unequal height, adpl . Another classification, according to the care taken in forming the letters, distinguishes between the set book-hand and the cursive script. The difference in this case is determined by the subject matter of the text; the writing used for books ( scriptura libraria ) is in all periods quite distinct from that used for letters and documents ( epistolaris , diplomatica ). While

4148-493: Is shown in some wax tablets of this period, the writing on which, despite the difference of material, closely resemble the hands of papyri. Documents of the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BC show there is nothing analogous to the Apollonius letters, perhaps partly by the accident of survival. In the more formal types the letters stand rather stiffly upright, often without the linking strokes, and are more uniform in size; in

4270-1068: Is the matres lectionis system to indicate certain vowels. Early Phoenician-derived scripts did not have letters for vowels, and so most texts recorded just consonants. Most likely as a consequence of phonetic changes in North Semitic languages, the Aramaeans reused certain letters in the alphabet to represent long vowels. The letter aleph was employed to write /ā/, he for /ō/, yod for /ī/, and vav for /ū/. Aramaic writing and language supplanted Babylonian cuneiform and Akkadian language , even in their homeland in Mesopotamia . The wide diffusion of Aramaic letters led to its writing being used not only in monumental inscriptions, but also on papyrus and potsherds . Aramaic papyri have been found in large numbers in Egypt, especially at Elephantine —among them are official and private documents of

4392-409: Is the study and academic discipline of the analysis of historical writing systems, the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic penmanship , handwriting script , signification and printed media . It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in

4514-559: The Ancient Middle East , originating in what is modern-day Syria , between 1000 and 600 BC. It spread from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of India, becoming extremely popular and being adopted by many people, both with or without any previous writing system. The Aramaic script was written in a consonantal form with a direction from right to left. The Aramaic alphabet , a modified form of Phoenician ,

4636-480: The Augustan Age . Epigraphists divide the numerous inscriptions of this period into two quite distinct classes: tituli , or formal inscriptions engraved on stone in elegant and regular capitals, and acta , or legal texts, documents, etc., generally engraved on bronze in cramped and careless capitals. Palaeography inherits both these types. Reproduced by scribes on papyrus or parchment, the elegant characters of

4758-653: The Edicts of Ashoka , is Prakrit . Besides Prakrit, the Ashokan edicts are also written in Greek and Aramaic. Moreover, all the edicts of Ashoka engraved in the Kharoshthi and Brahmi scripts are in the Prakrit language: thus, originally the language employed in the inscriptions was Prakrit, with Sanskrit adopted at a later stage. Past the period of the Maurya Empire , the use of Prakrit continued in inscriptions for

4880-736: The Greek alphabet were also added to the Indian context after its penetration in the early centuries AD, with the Arabic alphabet following in the 13th century. After a lapse of a few centuries the Kharoṣṭhi script became obsolete; the Greek script in India went through a similar fate and disappeared. But the Brahmi and Arabic scripts endured for a much longer period. Moreover, there was a change and development in

5002-552: The Jewish military settlement in 5 BC. In the Aramaic papyri and potsherds, words are separated usually by a small gap, as in modern writing. At the turn of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, the heretofore uniform Aramaic letters developed new forms, as a result of dialectal and political fragmentation in several subgroups. The most important of these is the so-called square Hebrew block script , followed by Palmyrene , Nabataean , and

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5124-659: The Rennes Manuscript , the Book of Ballymote , the Great Book of Lecan and the Yellow Book of Lecan in The Metrical Dindshenchas , published in four parts between 1903 and 1924, with a general introduction and indices published as a fifth part in 1935. There was also an Irish- and English-language journal Dinnseanchas , published by An Cumann Logainmeacha between 1964 and 1975 to

5246-411: The "severe" style, has a more angular appearance and not infrequently slopes to the right; though handsome, it has not the sumptuous appearance of the former. There are various classes of a less pretentious style, in which convenience rather than beauty was the first consideration and no pains were taken to avoid irregularities in the shape and alignment of the letters. Lastly may be mentioned a hand which

5368-640: The 10th century onwards. The use of Nandinagari , a variant of Nagari script, is mostly confined to the Karnataka region. In central India, mostly in Madhya Pradesh , the inscriptions of the Vakatakas , and the kings of Sarabhapura and Kosala were written in what are known as "box-headed" and "nail-headed" characters. It may be noted that the early Kadambas of Karnataka also employed "nail-headed" characters in some of their inscriptions. During

5490-566: The 10th to 8th centuries BC, especially extensive state treaties ( c.  750 BC ) and royal inscriptions. The early Old Ancient should be classified as "Ancient Aramaic" and consists of two clearly distinguished and standardised written languages, the Early Ancient Aramaic and the Late Ancient Aramaic. Aramaic was influenced at first principally by Akkadian , then from the 5th century BC by Persian and from

5612-453: The 10th, 11th and 12th centuries a sloping hand, less dignified than the upright, formal type, but often very handsome, was especially used for manuscripts of the classics. Hands of the 11th century are marked in general (though there are exceptions) by a certain grace and delicacy, exact but easy; those of the 12th by a broad, bold sweep and an increasing freedom, which readily admits uncial forms, ligatures and enlarged letters but has not lost

5734-412: The 12th century, with partial survivals in a number of other manuscript sources. The text shows signs of having been compiled from a number of provincial sources and the earliest poems date from at least the 11th century. The second recension survives more or less intact in thirteen different manuscripts, mostly dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. This recension contains a number of poems composed after

5856-411: The 19th century such scholars as Wilhelm Wattenbach , Leopold Delisle and Ludwig Traube contributed greatly to making palaeography independent from diplomatic. In the 20th century, the "New French School" of palaeographers, especially Jean Mallon , gave a new direction to the study of scripts by stressing the importance of ductus (the shape and order of the strokes used to compose letters) in studying

5978-460: The 1st century, are to be found in manuscripts of Virgil and Terence . Neither of these forms of capital writing offers any difficulty in reading, except that no space is left between the words. Their dates are still uncertain, in spite of attempts to determine them by minute observation. The rustic capitals, more practical than the square forms, soon came into general use. This was the standard form of writing, so far as books are concerned, until

6100-546: The 3rd century BC onwards by Greek , as well as by Hebrew , especially in Palestine . As Aramaic evolved into the imperial language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire , the script used to write it underwent a change into something more cursive. The best examples of this script come from documents written on papyrus from Egypt. About 500 BC, Darius I (522–486) made the Aramaic used by the imperial administration into

6222-534: The 3rd–4th century, the script used in the inscriptions of Ikshvakus of Nagarjunakonda developed a unique style of letter-forms with elongated verticals and artistic flourishes, which did not continue after their rule. The earliest attested form of writing in South India is represented by inscriptions found in caves, associated with the Chalukya and Chera dynasties. These are written in variants of what

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6344-487: The 4th century AD, it was replaced by Greek, Persian, the eastern and western dialects of Aramaic and Arabic, though not without leaving its traces in the written form of most of these. In its original Achaemenid form, Imperial Aramaic is found in texts of the 5th to 3rd centuries BC. These come mostly from Egypt and especially from the Jewish military colony of Elephantine , which existed at least from 530 to 399 BC. A history of Greek handwriting must be incomplete owing to

6466-626: The 4th century onwards, with the rise of the Guptas, Sanskrit became the predominant language of India and continued to be employed in texts and inscriptions of all parts of India along with the regional languages in the subsequent centuries. The copper-plate charters of the Pallavas , the Cholas and the Pandyas documents are written in both Sanskrit and Tamil. Kannada is used in texts dating from about

6588-595: The 5th century and the Halmidi inscription is considered to be the earliest epigraph written in the Kannada language . Inscriptions in Telugu began to appear from the 6th or 7th century. Malayalam made its beginning in writings from the 15th century onwards. In north India, the Brahmi script was used over a vast area; however, Ashokan inscriptions are also found using Kharoshthi , Aramaic and Greek scripts . With

6710-454: The 5th century, from which unfortunately few dated documents have survived. Byzantine cursive tends to an exuberant hand, in which the long strokes are excessively extended and individual letters often much enlarged. But not a few hands of the 5th and 6th centuries are truly handsome and show considerable technical accomplishment. Both an upright and a sloping type occur and there are many less ornamental hands, but there gradually emerged towards

6832-447: The 5th century, when it was replaced by a new type, the uncial, which is discussed below. While the set book-hand, in square or rustic capitals, was used for the copying of books, the writing of everyday life, letters and documents of all kinds, was in a cursive form, the oldest examples of which are provided by the graffiti on walls at Pompeii ( CIL , iv), a series of waxen tablets, also discovered at Pompeii ( CIL , iv, supplement),

6954-578: The 5th century. The three great early codices of the Bible are all written in uncials of the biblical type. In the Vaticanus , placed during the 4th century, the characteristics of the hand are least strongly marked; the letters have the forms characteristic of the type but without the heavy appearance of later manuscripts, and the general impression is one of greater roundness. In the Sinaiticus , which

7076-523: The 6th to about the 10th century, the inscriptions in north India were written in a script variously named, e.g., Siddhamatrika and Kutila ("Rañjanā script"). From the 8th century, Siddhamatrika developed into the Śāradā script in Kashmir and Punjab , into Proto-Bengali or Gaudi in Bengal and Orissa , and into Nagari in other parts of north India. Nagari script was used widely in northern India from

7198-429: The 7th century two general types, one (especially used in letters and contracts) a current hand, sloping to the right, with long strokes in such characters at ⟨τ⟩ , ⟨ρ⟩ , ⟨ξ⟩ , ⟨η⟩ (which has the h shape), ⟨ι⟩ , and ⟨κ⟩ , and with much linking of letters, and another (frequent in accounts), which shows, at least in essence, most of

7320-472: The 8th century, though with some differences from modern practice. At no period down to the invention of printing did Greek scribes consistently separate words. The book-hand of papyri aimed at an unbroken succession of letters, except for distinction of sections; in cursive hands, especially where abbreviations were numerous, some tendency to separate words may be recognised, but in reality it was phrases or groups of letters rather than words which were divided. In

7442-496: The 9th century a more ornamental type, from which modern Greek script descended, was already established. It has been suggested that it was evolved in the Monastery of Stoudios at Constantinople . In its earliest examples it is upright and exact but lacks flexibility; accents are small, breathings square in formation, and in general only such ligatures are used as involve no change in the shape of letters. The single forms have

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7564-538: The Book of Leinster text. Dindsenchas stories are also incorporated into saga texts such as Táin Bó Cúailnge and Acallam na Senórach . Although they are known today from these written sources, the dindsenchas are clearly a product of oral literature and are structured so as to be a mnemonic aid as well as a form of entertainment. They are far from an accurate history of how places came to be named. Many of

7686-512: The Brahmi script which may be traced in time and space through the Maurya , Kuṣaṇa , Gupta and early medieval periods. The present-day Nāgarī script is derived from Brahmi. The Brahmi is also the ancestral script of most other Indian scripts, in northern and southern South Asia. Legends and inscriptions in Brahmi are engraved upon leather, wood, terracotta, ivory, stone, copper, bronze, silver and gold. Arabic got an important place, particularly in

7808-614: The Festal letters despatched annually by the Patriarch of Alexandria , was occasionally used, the best known example being the Codex Marchalianus (6th or 7th century). A combination of this hand with the other type is also known. The uncial hand lingered on, mainly for liturgical manuscripts, where a large and easily legible script was serviceable, as late as the 12th century, but in ordinary use it had long been superseded by

7930-585: The Palestinian sheikh, Toubias, are in a type of script which cannot be very unlike the Chancery hand of the time, and show the Ptolemaic cursive at its best. These hands have a noble spaciousness and strength, and though the individual letters are by no means uniform in size there is a real unity of style, the general impression being one of breadth and uprightness. ⟨H⟩ , with the cross-stroke high, ⟨Π⟩ , ⟨Μ⟩ , with

8052-454: The West, where Greek scribes were in request to produce manuscripts of the classical authors, there was a revival, and several manuscripts of this period, though markedly inferior to those of the 11th and 12th centuries, are by no means without beauty. In the book-hand of early papyri, neither accents nor breathings were employed. Their use was established by the beginning of the Roman period, but

8174-425: The abstract to his 2005 paper "Problems of Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions" and stated: "The so-called science of paleography often relies on circular reasoning because there is insufficient data to draw precise conclusion about dating. Scholars also tend to oversimplify diachronic development, assuming models of simplicity rather than complexity". The Aramaic language was the international trade language of

8296-639: The advent of the Saka - Kshatrapas and the Kushanas as political powers in north India, the writing system underwent a definite change due to the use of new writing tools and techniques. Further development of the Brahmi script and perceivable changes in its evolutionary trend can be discerned during the Gupta period: in fact, the Gupta script is considered to be the successor of the Kushana script in north India. From

8418-440: The beginning of the line. The coronis , a more elaborate form of this, marked the beginning of lyrics or the principal sections of a longer work. Punctuation marks, the comma , the high, low and middle points, were established in the book-hand by the Roman period; in early Ptolemaic papyri, a double point ( ⟨:⟩ ) is found. In vellum and paper manuscripts, punctuation marks and accents were regularly used from at least

8540-492: The book-hand was occasionally used for documents. Since the scribe did not date literary rolls, such papyri are useful in tracing the development of the book-hand. The documents of the mid-3rd century BC show a great variety of cursive hands. There are none from chancelleries of the Hellenistic monarchs, but some letters, notably those of Apollonius , the finance minister of Ptolemy II , to this agent, Zeno, and those of

8662-497: The charred rolls found at Herculaneum are specimens of Greek literary hands from outside Egypt dating to c.  1 AD . A comparison with the Egyptian papyri reveals great similarity in style and shows that conclusions drawn from the henads of Egypt may, with caution, be applied to the development of writing in the Greek world generally. The cursive hand of the 4th century shows some uncertainty of character. Side by side with

8784-406: The contemporary cursive. In the 2nd century, the letters grew rounder and more uniform in size, but in the 1st century there is a certain disintegration perceptible, as in the cursive hand. Probably at no time did the Ptolemaic book-hand acquire such unity of stylistic effect as the cursive. Papyri of the Roman period are far more numerous and show greater variety. The cursive of the 1st century has

8906-435: The cross strokes of ⟨T⟩ and ⟨Θ⟩ and the base of ⟨Δ⟩ were furnished with drooping spurs. The hand, which is often singularly ugly , passed through various modifications, now sloping, now upright, though it is not certain that these variations were really successive rather than concurrent. A different type of uncials, derived from the Chancery hand and seen in two papyrus examples of

9028-449: The establishment of the great Alexandrian Library , which systematically copied literary and scientific works, and to the multifarious activities of Hellenistic bureaucracy. From here onward, the two types of script were sufficiently distinct (though each influenced the other) to require separate treatment. Some literary papyri, like the roll containing Aristotle 's Constitution of Athens , were written in cursive hands, and, conversely,

9150-469: The explanations given are made to fit the name and not the other way around, especially in the many cases where a place was much older than the Middle Irish spoken at the time of the poems' composition. In other cases, the dindsenchas poets may have invented names for places when the name of a place, if it had one, was not known to them. A detailed analysis points to a pre-Christian origin for most of

9272-460: The first dominated by majuscule and the second by minuscule writing. Jean Mabillon , a French Benedictine monk, scholar and antiquary , whose work De re diplomatica was published in 1681, is widely regarded as the founder of the twin disciplines of palaeography and diplomatics . However, the actual term "palaeography" was coined (in Latin) by Bernard de Montfaucon , a Benedictine monk , in

9394-657: The first quarter of the 1st century, contain verses in classical Sanskrit. From the 4th century onwards, the Gupta Empire came to power and supported the Sanskrit language and literature. In western India and also in some regions of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka , Prakrit was used till the 4th century, mostly in the Buddhist writings though in a few contemporary records of the Ikshvakus of Nagarjunakonda , Sanskrit

9516-400: The form of two almost perpendicular strokes joined only at the top, are usually small; ⟨ω⟩ is rather flat, its second loop reduced to a practically straight line. Partly by the broad flat tops of the larger letters, partly by the insertion of a stroke connecting those (like H, Υ) which are not naturally adapted to linking, the scribes produced the effect of a horizontal line along

9638-458: The forms of individual letters and in general appearance, bear a family likeness to one another. Qualities which are specially noticeable are roundness in the shape of letters, continuity of formation, the pen being carried on from character to character, and regularity, the letters not differing strikingly in size and projecting strokes above or below the line being avoided. Sometimes, especially in tax-receipts and in stereotyped formulae, cursiveness

9760-439: The forms of letters as followed that from metal to papyrus. The justification for considering the two materials separately is that after the general adoption of vellum, the Egyptian evidence is first supplemented and later superseded by that of manuscripts from elsewhere, and that during this period the hand most used was one not previously employed for literary purposes. The prevailing type of book-hand during what in papyrology

9882-459: The forms of the later minuscule. (cf. below .) This is often upright, though a slope to the right is quite common, and sometimes, especially in one or two documents of the early Arabic period, it has an almost calligraphic effect. In the Byzantine period, the book-hand, which in earlier times had more than once approximated to the contemporary cursive, diverged widely from it. The change from papyrus to vellum involved no such modification in

10004-578: The formularies of the private documents and the Proverbs of Ahiqar have maintained an older tradition of sentence structure and style. Imperial Aramaic immediately replaced Ancient Aramaic as a written language and, with slight modifications, it remained the official, commercial and literary language of the Near East until gradually, beginning with the fall of the Achaemenids in 331 BC and ending in

10126-473: The fragmentary nature of evidence. If one rules out the inscriptions on stone or metal, which belong to the science of epigraphy , there is practically a dependence on papyri from Egypt for the period preceding the 4th or 5th century AD, the earliest of which take back our knowledge only to the end of the 4th century BC. This limitation is less serious than might appear, since the few manuscripts not of Egyptian origin which have survived from this period, like

10248-491: The historical development of scripts. The Latin alphabet first appears in the epigraphic type of majuscule writing, known as capitals. These characters form the main stem from which developed all the branches of Latin writing. On the oldest monuments (the inscriptiones bello Hannibalico antiquiores of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum = CIL ), it is far from showing the orderly regularity of

10370-438: The historical usages of various styles of handwriting, common writing customs, and scribal or notarial abbreviations, annotations conventions, annexures , addenda and specifics of printed typology, syntagm and proxemics must be assessed as a collective undertaking. Philological knowledge of the register, language, vocabulary, and grammar generally used at a given time, place and circumstance may assist palaeographers to identify

10492-428: The history of scriptoria . This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, in the absence of additional evidence, it cannot be used to pinpoint exact dates. The discipline is one of the auxiliary sciences of history , and is considered to have been founded by Jean Mabillon with his work De re diplomatica , published in 1681, which was the first textbook to address

10614-419: The inscriptions become the square capitals of the manuscripts, and the actuaria , as the writing of the acta is called, becomes the rustic capital . Of the many books written in square capitals, the éditions de luxe of ancient times, only a few fragments have survived, the most famous being pages from manuscripts of Virgil . The finest examples of rustic capitals, the use of which is attested by papyri of

10736-421: The later minuscule word-division is much commoner but never became systematic, accents and breathings serving of themselves to indicate the proper division. The view that the art of writing in India developed gradually, as in other areas of the world, by going through the stages of pictographic, ideographic and transitional phases of the phonetic script, which in turn developed into syllabic and alphabetic scripts

10858-428: The later period. Side by side with upright and square characters are angular and sloping forms, sometimes very distorted, which seem to indicate the existence of an early cursive writing from which they would have been borrowed. Certain literary texts clearly allude to such a hand. Later, the characters of the cursive type were progressively eliminated from formal inscriptions, and capital writing reached its perfection in

10980-453: The loss of the feeling for style. A fortunate accident has preserved two Greek parchments written in Parthia , one dated 88 BC, in a practically unligatured hand, the other, 22/21 BC, in a very cursive script of Ptolemaic type; and though each has non-Egyptian features the general character indicates a uniformity of style in the Hellenistic world. The development of the Ptolemaic book-hand

11102-473: The materials used. To this general rule the Greek script is no exception. Whatever may have been the period at which the use of papyrus or leather as a writing material began in Greece (and papyrus was employed in the 5th century BC), it is highly probable that for some time after the introduction of the alphabet the characters were incised with a sharp tool on stones or metal far oftener than they were written with

11224-407: The medium. Hence, the specialist-palaeographer, philologist and semiotician must know how to, in the broadest sense, interpret, comprehend and understand them. Knowledge of individual letterforms , typographic ligatures , signs, typology , fonts , graphemes, hieroglyphics , and signification forms in general, subsuming punctuation , syntagm and proxemics , abbreviations and annotations; enables

11346-426: The middle of the 3rd century BC, one finds both a practised book-hand and a developed and often remarkably handsome cursive. These facts may be due to accident, the few early papyri happening to represent an archaic style which had survived along with a more advanced one; but it is likely that there was a rapid development at this period, due partly to the opening of Egypt, with its supplies of papyri, and still more to

11468-476: The middle stroke reduced to a very shallow curve, sometimes approaching a horizontal line, ⟨Υ⟩ , and ⟨Τ⟩ , with its cross-bar extending much further to the left than to the right of the up-stroke, ⟨Γ⟩ and ⟨Ν⟩ , whose last stroke is prolonged upwards above the line, often curving backwards, are all broad; ⟨ε⟩ , ⟨c⟩ , ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨β⟩ , which sometimes takes

11590-415: The more cursive they are apt to be packed closely together. These features are more marked in the hands of the 2nd century. The less cursive often show am approximation to the book-hand, the letters growing rounder and less angular than in the 3rd century; in the more cursive linking was carried further, both by the insertion of coupling strokes and by the writing of several letters continuously without raising

11712-485: The much later Syriac script . Aramaic is usually divided into three main parts: The term Middle Aramaic refers to the form of Aramaic which appears in pointed texts and is reached in the 3rd century AD with the loss of short unstressed vowels in open syllables, and continues until the triumph of Arabic . Old Aramaic appeared in the 11th century BC as the official language of the first Aramaean states . The oldest witnesses to it are inscriptions from northern Syria of

11834-498: The official language of the western half of the Achaemenid Empire . This so-called " Imperial Aramaic " (the oldest dated example, from Egypt, belonging to 495 BC) is based on an otherwise unknown written form of Ancient Aramaic from Babylonia . In orthography, Imperial Aramaic preserves historical forms— alphabet , orthography , morphology , pronunciation , vocabulary , syntax and style are highly standardised. Only

11956-564: The outset to certain fundamental definitions and principles of the science. The original characters of an alphabet are modified by the material and the implements used. When stone and chisel are discarded for papyrus and reed-pen, the hand encounters less resistance and moves more rapidly. This leads to changes in the size and position of the letters, and then to the joining of letters, and, consequently, to altered shapes. We are thus confronted at an early date with quite distinct types. The majuscule style of writing, based on two parallel lines, ADPL ,

12078-465: The palaeographer to read, comprehend and then to understand the text and/or the relationship and hierarchy between texts in suite. The palaeographer, philologist and semiotician must first determine language, then dialect and then the register, function and purpose of the text. That is, one must by necessity become expert in the formation, historicity and evolution of these languages and signification communities, and material communication events . Secondly,

12200-484: The parchments from Avroman or Dura , the Herculaneum papyri , and a few documents found in Egypt but written elsewhere, reveal a uniformity of style in the various portions of the Greek world; however, differences can be discerned, with it being probable that distinct local styles could be traced were there more material to analyze. Further, during any given period several types of hand may exist together. There

12322-450: The pen, so that before the end of the century an almost current hand was evolved. A characteristic letter, which survived into the early Roman period, is ⟨T⟩ , with its cross-stroke made in two portions (variants: [REDACTED] ). In the 1st century, the hand tended, so far as can be inferred from surviving examples, to disintegrate; one can recognise the signs which portend a change of style, irregularity, want of direction, and

12444-402: The principal characteristics of two new types: the uncial and the minuscule cursive . With the coming into use of writing surfaces which were smooth, or offered little resistance, the unhampered haste of the writer altered the shape, size and position of the letters. In the earliest specimens of writing on wax, plaster or papyrus, there appears a tendency to represent several straight strokes by

12566-419: The real or putative history of local places formed an important part of the education of the elite in ancient Ireland. This formed part of the training of the military, for whom a knowledge of the landscape was essential. It was also essential knowledge for the bardic caste, who were expected to recite poems answering questions on place name origins as part of their professional duties. An early example of this are

12688-566: The royalty, during the medieval period and it provides rich material for history writing. The decipherment and subsequent development of Indus glyphs is also a matter for continuing research and discussion. Most of the available inscriptions and manuscripts written in the above scripts—in languages like Prakrit , Pali , Sanskrit , Apabhraṃśa , Tamil and Persian —have been read and exploited for history writing, but numerous inscriptions preserved in different museums still remain undeciphered for lack of competent palaeographic Indologists, as there

12810-407: The same characteristics less pronounced; and its effects may be traced into the early part of the 4th century. Hands of the 3rd century uninfluenced by it show a falling off from the perfection of the 2nd century; stylistic uncertainty and a growing coarseness of execution mark a period of decline and transition. Several different types of book-hand were used in the Roman period. Particularly handsome

12932-604: The same time, the modern Malayalam script developed out of the Grantha script. The early form of the Telugu-Kannada script is found in the inscriptions of the early Kadambas of Banavasi and the early Chalukyas of Badami in the west, and Salankayana and the early Eastern Chalukyas in the east who ruled the Kannada and Telugu speaking areas respectively, during the 4th to 7th centuries. Attention should be drawn at

13054-584: The scientific study of ancient documents – the hands in which they are written, the age to which they belong and generally speaking the purposes, methods and circumstances of the men who produced them." This philology -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a manuscript is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Palaeography Palaeography ( UK ) or paleography ( US ; ultimately from ‹See Tfd› Greek : παλαιός , palaiós , 'old', and γράφειν , gráphein , 'to write')

13176-416: The sense of style and decorative effect. In the 13th and still more in the 14th centuries there was a steady decline; the less formal hands lost their beauty and exactness, becoming ever more disorderly and chaotic in their effect, while formal style imitated the precision of an earlier period without attaining its freedom and naturalness, and often appears singularly lifeless. In the 15th century, especially in

13298-433: The set book-hand, in majuscule or minuscule, shows a tendency to stabilise the forms of the letters, the cursive, often carelessly written, is continually changing in the course of years and according to the preferences of the writers. This being granted, a summary survey of the morphological history of the Latin alphabet shows the zenith of its modifications at once, for its history is divided into two very unequal periods,

13420-401: The style founded on the Chancery hand , regular in formation and with tall and narrow letters, which characterised the period of Diocletian , and lasted well into the century, we find many other types mostly marked by a certain looseness and irregularity. A general progress towards a florid and sprawling hand is easily recognisable, but a consistent and deliberate style was hardly evolved before

13542-508: The style, substance and formation of the text, document and manuscript and the handwriting style and printed typology, grapheme typos and lexical and signification system(s) employed. Palaeography may be employed to provide information about the date at which a document was written. However, "paleography is a last resort for dating" and, "for book hands, a period of 50 years is the least acceptable spread of time" with it being suggested that "the 'rule of thumb' should probably be to avoid dating

13664-473: The subject. The term palaeography was coined by Bernard de Montfaucon with the publication of his work on Greek palaeography, the Palaeographia Graeca, in 1708. Palaeography is an essential skill for many historians , semioticians and philologists , as it addresses a suite of interrelated lines of inquiry. First, since the style of an alphabet , grapheme or sign system set within

13786-470: The tales about Mongán mac Fíachnai which date from at least as early as 750, where the poet Forgoll is asked to recite the lore of different places. Consequently, the dindshenchas may well have grown by accretion from local texts compiled in schools as a way of teaching about places in their area. Edward Gwynn compiled and translated dindsenchas poems from the Lebor na hUidre , the Book of Leinster ,

13908-538: The tales. For example, many placenames appear which had fallen out of use by the 5th century A.D., when Irish written records began to appear in quantity. Furthermore County Clare is given as part of Connaught suggesting a date before ~610 AD and the Battle of Knocklong. Christian references, and the Graeco-Roman myths and tales of Pagan atrocity associated with that influence are also mostly absent. Knowledge of

14030-562: The title of his Palaeographia Graeca (1708), which remained a standard work in the specific field of Greek palaeography for more than a century. With their establishment of palaeography, Mabillon and his fellow Benedictines were responding to the Jesuit Daniel Papebroch , who doubted the authenticity of some of the documents which the Benedictines offered as credentials for the authorisation of their monasteries. In

14152-422: The top of the writing, from which the letters seem to hang. This feature is indeed a general characteristic of the more formal Ptolemaic script, but it is specially marked in the 3rd century BC. Besides these hand of Chancery type, there are numerous less elaborate examples of cursive, varying according to the writer's skill and degree of education, and many of them strikingly easy and handsome. In some cursiveness

14274-405: Was a marked difference between the hand used for literary works (generally called " uncials " but, in the papyrus period, better styled "book-hand") and that of documents (" cursive ") and within each of these classes several distinct styles were employed side by side; and the various types are not equally well represented in the surviving papyri. The development of any hand is largely influenced by

14396-414: Was applied. The inscription of Yajna Sri Satakarni (2nd century) from Amaravati is considered to be the earliest so far. The earlier writings (4th century) of Salankayanas of the Telugu region are in Prakrit, while their later records (belonging to the 5th century) are written in Sanskrit. In the Kannada speaking area , inscriptions belonging to later Satavahanas and Chutus were written in Prakrit. From

14518-457: Was at its height. By this time it had become an imitative hand, in which there was generally no room for spontaneous development. It remained noticeably uniform over a long period. It is difficult therefore to date the manuscripts by palaeographical criteria alone. The most that can be done is to classify them by centuries, on the strength of tenuous data. The earliest uncial writing is easily distinguished by its simple and monumental character from

14640-517: Was challenged by Falk and others in the early 1990s. In the new paradigm, Indian alphabetic writing, called Brahmi , was discontinuous with earlier, undeciphered, glyphs, and was invented specifically by King Ashoka for application in his royal edicts 250 BC . In the subcontinent, Kharosthi (clearly derived from the Aramaic alphabet ) was used at the same time in the northwest, next to Brahmi (at least influenced by Aramaic) elsewhere. In addition,

14762-407: Was sporadic in papyri, where they were used as an aid to understanding, and therefore more frequently in poetry than prose, and in lyrical oftener than in other verse. In the cursive of papyri they are practically unknown, as are marks of punctuation. Punctuation was effected in early papyri, literary and documentary, by spaces, reinforced in the book-hand by the paragraphos , a horizontal stroke under

14884-649: Was the ancestor of the modern Arabic and Hebrew scripts , as well as the Brahmi script , the parent writing system of most modern abugidas in India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia. Initially, the Aramaic script did not differ from the Phoenician, but then the Aramaeans simplified some of the letters, thickened and rounded their lines: a specific feature of its letters is the distinction between ⟨d⟩ and ⟨r⟩ . One innovation in Aramaic

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