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169-542: Through paleographic analysis undertaken by Bernhard Bischoff in the 1960s it is now commonly accepted that the manuscript originated around 820 at the scriptorium at St. Germain-des-Prés in Paris, a royal monastery which enjoyed the personal patronage of Charlemagne . The original owner or sponsor of the book is not known. The first mention of the manuscript's existence occurs in a letter dated in 1787 regarding its sale to Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg , and its presence in

338-439: A librarius was also valued in business settings, where they might serve as clerks. For example, a libraria cellaria would be a woman who kept business records such as inventories. An early 2nd-century marble relief from Rome depicts a female scribe, seated on a chair and writing on kind of a tablet, facing the butcher who is chopping meat at a table. Eleven Latin inscriptions uncovered from Rome identify women as scribes in

507-909: A Roman citizen literate in Greek, made use of an amanuensis for his epistles . It was considered impolite, however, to use a scribe for writing personal letters to friends; these were to be written by one's own hand. The Vindolanda tablets (early 2nd century CE) from a fort in Roman Britain contain several hundred examples of handwriting; a few tablets stand out as having been written by professional scribes. Some Roman households had libraries extensive enough to require specialized staff including librarii , copyists or scribes, who were often slaves or freedmen, along with more general librarians (librarioli) . Public libraries also existed under imperial sponsorship, and bookshops both sold books and employed independent librarii along with other specialists who constructed

676-456: A body of inscriptions made on bronze vessels and oracle bones during the late Shang dynasty ( c.  1250  – 1050  BCE ), with the very oldest dated to c.  1200   BCE . It was originally used for divination, with characters etched onto turtle shells to interpret cracks caused by exposure to heat. By the sixth century BCE, scribes were producing books using bamboo and wooden slips . Each strip contained

845-439: A complex symbology developed for the messages. Modern versions sold at shrines, often already stamped with their local affiliation, tend to be used more verbally, with space left for individuals to act as their own scribes in messaging the kami . Scribes of ancient Israel were a literate minority in an oral based-culture . Some of them belonged to the priestly class , other scribes were the record-keepers and letter-writers in

1014-438: 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

1183-839: A day, working on a low table and seated on the floor. Both speed and accuracy mattered. Proofreaders checked the copy against the exemplar, and the scribe's pay was docked for errors. In the 8th century, the demand for vast quantities of copies meant that scribes in the Office of Sutra Transcription were lay people of common status, not yet ordained monks, some finding opportunities for advancement. In Classical Japan , even lay scribes at some sutra copyist centers were required to practice ritual purity through vegetarian dietary restrictions , wearing ritual garments ( jōe ) , ablution, avoiding contact with death and illness, and possibly sexual abstinence. Outside Buddhist centers, professional scriveners practiced copyist craft. Court-commissioned chronicles of

1352-564: 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

1521-402: 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

1690-419: 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

1859-499: 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

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2028-455: 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

2197-415: 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

2366-402: 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

2535-510: 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

2704-461: 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

2873-415: A personal embodiment of their profession. The Buddhist Tripiṭaka emerged at the beginning of the first century. Buddhist texts were treasured and sacred throughout Asia and were written in different languages. Buddhist scribes believed that, “The act of copying them could bring a scribe closer to perfection and earn him merit.” Rather later, Hindu texts were written, although the most sacred, especially

3042-554: A prized skill due to the belief that "the best way to absorb the contents of a book was to copy it by hand". Chinese scribes played an instrumental role in the imperial government's civil service. During the Tang dynasty, private collections of Confucian classics began to grow. Young men hoping to join the civil service would need to pass an exam based on Confucian doctrine, and these collections, which became known as "academy libraries" were places of study. Within this merit system, owning books

3211-432: 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

3380-480: A reed (2 mm). The end of the rush was cut obliquely and then chewed so that the fibers became separated. The result was a short, stiff brush which was handled in the same manner as that of a calligrapher. Thoth was the god credited with the invention of writing by the ancient Egyptians. He was the scribe of the gods who held knowledge of scientific and moral laws. The earliest known examples of writing in China are

3549-537: A role in creating ofuda (talismans), omikuji (fortunes or divination lots), ema (votive tablets), goshuin (calligraphic visitor stamps), and gomagi (inscribed sticks for ritual burning), forms that may employ a combination of stamps and handwriting on media . Today these are often mass produced and commercialized for marketing to tourists. Ema , for instance, began as large-scale pictorial representations that historically were created by professional artists. Small versions began to be produced and sold, and

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3718-551: 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

3887-410: A single column of script, and the books were bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. China is well-known as being the place where paper was originally invented, likely by an imperial eunuch named Cai Lun in 105 CE. The invention of paper allowed for the later invention of woodblock printing, where paper was rubbed onto an inked slab to copy the characters. Despite this invention, calligraphy remained

4056-404: 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

4225-624: A suite of interrelated lines of inquiry. First, since the style of an alphabet , grapheme or sign system set within 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

4394-417: A system of writing not meant to express it meant that acquiring literacy was a long process. Phonetic syllabaries ( kana ) , used for private writing, were developed by the 8th century and were in use along with kanji , the logographic system, used for official records. Gendering of the private and public spheres led to a characterization of kana as more feminine and kanji as masculine, but women of

4563-404: 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

4732-458: A vital role in the dissemination of literary culture. During the middle to late 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian literature in the form of disputations proliferated, such as the Debate between bird and fish ; the Debate between Summer and Winter , in which Winter wins; and others between the cattle and grain, the tree and the reed, silver and copper, the pickaxe and the plough, and the millstone and

4901-434: 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,

5070-407: 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

5239-492: 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

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5408-454: 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

5577-411: 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⟩

5746-538: 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

5915-401: 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

6084-435: 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

6253-518: 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,

6422-489: 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

6591-480: 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;

6760-517: 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

6929-405: 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

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7098-542: 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 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

7267-495: 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

7436-487: 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

7605-1046: 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

7774-543: 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 ,

7943-474: 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

8112-631: 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

8281-716: 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

8450-543: 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

8619-478: The Roman Empire , and medieval Europe . Judaism , Buddhism , and Islam have important scribal traditions. Scribes have been essential in these cultures for the preservation of legal codes, religious texts, and artistic and didactic literature. In some cultures, social functions of the scribe and of the calligrapher overlap, but the emphasis in scribal writing is on exactitude, whereas calligraphy aims to express

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8788-589: The Sabbath . The primary purpose of these scribes was to promote the ideas of the Christian Church, so they mostly copied classical and religious works. The scribes were required to copy works in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew whether or not they understood the language. These re-creations were often written in calligraphy and featured rich illustrations, making the process incredibly time-consuming. Scribes had to be familiar with

8957-528: The Shōsōin archives of the Tōdai-ji temple complex. The institution of the ritsuryō legal state from the 8th to 10th centuries produced "a mountain of paperwork" employing hundreds of bureaucratic scribes in the capital and in the provinces. The average sutra copyist is estimated to have generated 3,800–4,000 characters a day. Scribes were paid by the "page," and the fastest completed thirteen or more sheets

9126-547: The Vedas , were not written down until much later , and were learnt by heart by the priestly Brahmins . Writing in the several scripts of Indic languages was generally not regarded as a distinct artistic form, in a situation similar to Europe, but different from East Asian traditions of calligraphy . By the 5th century CE, written Chinese was being adapted in Japan to represent spoken Japanese . The complexity of reconciling Japanese with

9295-436: The equestrian order . Among the writing duties of a scriba was the recording of sworn oaths on public tablets. The office afforded several advantages, including a knowledge of Roman law that was traditionally the privilege of the elite. People who needed legal documents drawn up and whose own literacy was low could make use of a public scribe. A scriba might also be a private secretary. A tabellio (Greek agoraios )

9464-422: The scrolls . A copyist ( librarius or libraria ) was said to need an "irrational knack" for copying text accurately without slowing down to comprehend it. Some literary slaves specialized in proofreading . Occasionally even senators took dictation or copied texts by hand for personal use, as did grammatici (“grammarians” or professors of higher education), but generally the routine copying of manuscripts

9633-411: 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

9802-623: 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

9971-548: 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

10140-453: 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

10309-411: 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

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10478-460: 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

10647-532: 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

10816-523: 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

10985-487: 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

11154-608: 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

11323-581: 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

11492-454: 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

11661-447: 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),

11830-563: 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

11999-514: 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

12168-429: 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

12337-555: The 8th century, such as Kojiki and Nihon shoki , survive in much later copies, as is the case for the first Japanese poetry anthologies. The earliest printed books were produced under the Empress Shōtoku on a large scale in the 8th century, only three centuries after Japanese became a written language, and by the Edo period (1603–1868) bound printed books predominated. Manuscripts remained valued for their aesthetic qualities, and

12506-472: 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

12675-491: 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

12844-508: 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

13013-597: 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

13182-632: The Hebrew Torah scrolls and other holy texts. Until 1948, the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible dated back to CE 895. In 1947, a shepherd boy discovered some scrolls dated between 100 BCE and CE 100, inside a cave west of the Dead Sea . Over the next decade, more scrolls were found in caves and the discoveries became known collectively as the Dead Sea Scrolls . Every book in the Hebrew Bible

13351-574: 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

13520-477: The Torah. This version was different from the Torah of their fathers. Ezra did not write a new bible. Through the genius of his ‘editing', he presented the religion in a new light. Ancient Rome had several occupations for which the ability to write accurately and clearly was the primary qualification. The English word “scribe” derives from the Latin word scriba , a public notary or clerk . The public scribae were

13689-450: 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

13858-425: 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

14027-545: The accuracy and consistency of translation for the Hebrew Bible because they are the oldest out of any biblical text currently known. Priests who took over the leadership of the Jewish community preserved and edited biblical literature. Biblical literature became a tool that legitimated and furthered the priests' political and religious authority. Corrections by the scribes ( Tiqqun soferim ) refers to changes that were made in

14196-832: The actual psalm text; historical, where the psalm text refers to other episodes in the Hebrew Bible; or Christological, where the text is seen as predictive or relevant to the life of Christ in the New Testament. The Stuttgart Psalter is of great interest to Carolingian historians because of the detail and variety of the contemporary objects it portrays, a partial list of which might include: plants and animals, architecture, battles and militaria, dress and fashion, gender roles, appearance of Frankish nobles, demonology, farming, representation of imagined Jews, hunting and farming techniques, church ritual and priestly vestments, musical instruments, and more. The manuscript also features an array of monsters, unicorns, animals, allegorical figures, and likely

14365-622: 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

14534-499: The aesthetic qualities of writing apart from its content. Scribes, previously so widespread across cultures, lost most of their prominence and status with the advent of the printing press . The generally less prestigious profession of scrivener continued to be important for copying and writing out legal documents and the like. In societies with low literacy rates, street-corner letter-writers (and readers) may still be found providing scribe service. The Sumerians developed one of

14703-426: 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 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

14872-440: 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

15041-486: 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

15210-492: 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

15379-514: The civil service. Much of what is known about ancient Egypt is due to the activities of its scribes and the officials. But because of their ability to study in the vast Egyptian libraries, they were entrusted with jobs bigger than just copyists. Monumental buildings were erected under their supervision, administrative and economic activities were documented by them, and stories from Egypt's lower classes and foreign lands survive due to scribes putting them in writing. Scribes were considered part of

15548-406: 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

15717-451: The court were educated and knew kanji , and men also wrote in kana , while works of literature were produced in both. The earliest extant writings take the form of mokkan , wooden slips used for official memoranda and short communications and for practical purposes such as shipping tags; inscriptions on metal and stone; and manuscripts of sutras and commentaries. Mokkan were often used for writing practice. Manuscripts first took

15886-435: 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

16055-424: 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 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

16224-477: The ducal library at Stuttgart is recorded for the first time in 1818. The Stuttgart Psalter contains 162 decorated initials, including one at the beginning of each psalm, which show floral, geometrical, zoomorphic, and interlaced patterns and motifs. The text is written in Carolingian minuscule . Two or three miniatures are included within each psalm text, which can be categorized in three ways: literal, illustrating

16393-493: The earliest writing systems , the first body of written literature, and an extensive scribal profession to further these activities. The work of Near Eastern scribes primarily exists on clay tablets and stone monuments written in cuneiform , though later in the period of cuneiform writing they begin to use papyrus , parchment , and writing tablets. The body of knowledge that scribes possessed belonged to an elite urban culture, and few had access to it. Traveling scribes played

16562-796: The earliest known copy of a printed book is of the Diamond Sutra dating to 868 CE, which was found alongside other manuscripts within a walled-in cave called Dunhuang . As professionals, scribes would undergo three years of training before becoming novices. The title of "scribe" was inherited from father to son. Early in their careers, they would work with local and regional governments and did not enjoy an official rank. A young scribe needed to hone their writing skills before specializing in an area like public administration or law. Archaeological evidence even points to scribes being buried with marks of their trade such as brushes, "administrative, legal, divinatory, mathematical, and medicinal texts", thus displaying

16731-449: 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,

16900-478: The first depictions of a bellows-driven pipe organ and a "green man" in the early Middle Ages. Paleography Palaeography ( UK ) or paleography ( US ; ultimately from Ancient Greek : παλαιός , palaiós , 'old', and γράφειν , gráphein , 'to write') 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

17069-456: 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

17238-636: 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

17407-498: The form of dialogues in response to questions. The transcriber also filled in context for the transmission. After the text was verified, it became part of the canon, stored in secret places, viewable by affiliated monks, and used to legitimate forms of religious authority. Because they dealt with genealogies and sacral boundaries, oracle texts were consulted as references in questions of lineage and land ownership. At contemporary Shinto or Buddhist shrines, scribal traditions still play

17576-457: The form of rolls made from cloth or sheets of paper, but when manuscripts began to appear as bound books, they coexisted with handscrolls (makimono) . The influence of Chinese culture, especially written culture, made writing "immensely important" in the early Japanese court . The earliest Japanese writing to survive dates from the late Asuka and Nara periods (550–794), when Buddhist texts were being copied and disseminated. Because Buddhism

17745-400: 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

17914-458: 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

18083-439: 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

18252-459: 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

18421-562: 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

18590-444: The formulas for writing legal contracts , and proverbs . They then might have advanced to praise poems and finally to copying more sophisticated works of literature. Some scholars have thought that apprentice scribes listened to literary compositions read aloud and took dictation; others, that they copied directly from master copies. A combination of dictation, copying, and memorization for reproduction has also been proposed. One of

18759-473: 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

18928-471: The gul-gul stone. Nearly all known Sumerian literary works were preserved as a result of young scribes apprenticing for their profession. In addition to literary works, the contents of the tablets they produced include word lists, syllabaries , grammar forms , and lists of personal names. To the extent that the curriculum in scribal schools can be reconstructed, it appears that they would have begun by studying lists and syllabaries and learning metrology ,

19097-461: The highest in rank of the four prestigious occupational grades ( decuriae ) among the attendants of the Roman magistrates . In the city of Rome, the scribae worked out of the state treasury and government archive. They received a good salary. Scribae were often former slaves and their sons; other literary or educated men who advanced to the job through patronage ; or even men as highly ranked as

19266-479: 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

19435-438: 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

19604-428: The ink, write the script, bind the pages, and create a cover to protect the script. This was all accomplished in a monastic writing room called a scriptorium which was kept very quiet so scribes could maintain concentration. A large scriptorium may have up to 40 scribes working. Scribes woke to morning bells before dawn and worked until the evening bells, with a lunch break in between. They worked every day except for

19773-419: 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

19942-408: The knowledge, such as local history and antiquarianism , a family's accumulated lore or farming methods, or medical texts of a particular school of medicine. Intentional secrecy might be desired to protect arcane knowledge or proprietary information with commercial value. In the esoteric strand of Japanese Buddhism , scribes recorded oracles, the utterances of a kami -inspired person often in

20111-677: The later hands, which become progressively stiff and affected. Scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist , especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing . The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as secretarial and administrative duties such as the taking of dictation and keeping of business, judicial, and historical records for kings , nobles , temples , and cities . The profession of scribe first appears in Mesopotamia . Scribes contributed in fundamental ways to ancient and medieval cultures, including Egypt , China , India , Persia ,

20280-421: 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

20449-428: 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

20618-448: 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

20787-512: The major centers of publishing and printing, manuscripts were a route to publication. Some authors self-published their books, especially romance novels ( ninjōbon ) , in manuscript form. Women's prose writings in general were circulated as manuscripts during the Edo period. Women were not prevented from writing and circulating their work, but private publication may have been a way for women to adhere to gender norms in not making themselves available in

20956-469: 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

21125-407: 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

21294-426: 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

21463-476: 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

21632-415: 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

21801-425: The most important professionals in ancient Egypt was a person educated in the arts of writing (both hieroglyphics and hieratic scripts, as well as the demotic script from the second half of the first millennium BCE, which was mainly used as shorthand and for commerce) and arithmetic. Sons of scribes were brought up in the same scribal tradition, sent to school, and inherited their fathers' positions upon entering

21970-485: 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

22139-490: 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

22308-512: The original wording of the Hebrew Bible during the second temple period, perhaps sometime between 450 and 350 BCE. One of the most prominent men at this time was Ezra the scribe . He also hired scribes to work for him, in order to write down and revise the oral tradition. After Ezra and the scribes had completed the writing, Ezra gathered the Jews who had returned from exile, all of whom belonged to Kohanim families. Ezra read them an unfamiliar version of

22477-564: 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 ,

22646-465: 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,

22815-478: 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

22984-450: 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

23153-402: 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

23322-450: The public sphere. Manuscripts could more readily evade government censorship , and officially banned books that could no longer be printed were copied for personal use or circulated privately. Lending libraries (kashihon'ya) offered manuscript books, including illicit texts, along with printed books. Books might also be composed as manuscripts when their transmission was limited to a particular circle of interested parties or sharers in

23491-587: The royal court, were not conscripted into the army, did not have to pay taxes, and were exempt from the heavy manual labor required of the lower classes ( corvée labor). The scribal profession worked with painters and artisans who decorated reliefs and other building works with scenes, personages, or hieroglyphic text. However, the physical aspect of their work sometimes took a toll on their joints , with ancient bones showing some signs of arthritis that might be attributable to their profession. The demotic scribes used rush pens which had stems thinner than that of

23660-607: The royal palaces and administrative centers, affiliated with the ancient equivalent of professional guilds . There were no scribal schools in Israel during the early part of the Iron Age (1200–800 B.C.E.). Between the 13th and 8th centuries B.C.E., the Hebrew alphabetic system had not been developed. Only after the appearance of the Kingdom of Israel , Finkelstein points to the reign of Omri , did

23829-566: 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

23998-407: 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

24167-587: 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

24336-454: The scribal schools begin to develop, reaching their culmination in the time of Jeroboam II , under Mesopotamian influence. The eventual standardization of the Hebrew writing system between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C.E. would presumably have given rise to codified rules and principles of language that scribes would then have learned. The education of scribes in ancient Israel was supported by

24505-425: The scribal tradition continued to flourish for a wide range of reasons. In addition to handwritten practical documents pertaining to legal and commercial transactions, individuals might write journals or commonplace books , which involved copying out sometimes lengthy passages by hand. This copying might extend to complete manuscripts of books that were expensive or not readily available to buy. But scribal culture

24674-532: The sense of copyists or amanuenses (not public scribae ). Among these are Magia, Pyrrhe, Vergilia Euphrosyne, and a freedwoman whose name does not survive; Hapate, a shorthand writer of Greek who lived to the age of 25; and Corinna, a storeroom clerk and scribe. Three are identified as literary assistants: Tyche, Herma, and Plaetoriae. In the Middle Ages , every book was made by hand. Specially trained monks, or scribes, had to carefully cut sheets of parchment, make

24843-416: 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

25012-480: 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,

25181-458: The spiritual enlightenment of his departed mother." Creating a calligraphic and pictorial work by copying secular literature likewise was an aesthetic practice for its own sake and a means of study. Within the social elite of the court, calligraphy was thought to express the inner character of the writer. In the Heian period , the book collector, scholar-scribe, and literary artist Fujiwara no Teika

25350-528: The state, although some scribal arts could have been taught within a small number of families. Some scribes also copied documents, but this was not necessarily part of their job. The Jewish scribes used the following rules and procedures while creating copies of the Torah and eventually other books in the Hebrew Bible . Sofers (Jewish scribes) are among the few scribes that still do their trade by hand, writing on parchment . Renowned calligraphers , they produce

25519-401: 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

25688-508: 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

25857-546: 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

26026-422: 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

26195-476: The writing technology as well. They had to make sure that the lines were straight and the letters were the same size in each book that they copied. It typically took a scribe fifteen months to copy a Bible. Such books were written on parchment or vellum made from treated hides of sheep, goats, or calves. These hides were often from the monastery's own animals as monasteries were self-sufficient in raising animals, growing crops, and brewing beer. The overall process

26364-524: Was a leader in preserving and producing quality manuscripts of works of literature. Even so prolific an author of printed prose works as Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) also produced handwritten works in several formats, including manuscripts, handscrolls, and poetry slips ( tanzaku ) and cards (shikishi) . Unique and prized handscrolls preserved the collaborative poetry sessions characteristic of renga and haikai poetic composition, distributed more widely in printed copies. For authors not located near

26533-445: Was a lower rank of scribe or notary who worked in civil service. A notarius was a stenographer . An amanuensis was a scribe who took dictation and perhaps offered some compositional polish. Amanuenses were typically Greek and might be either male or female. Upper-class Romans made extensive use of dictation, and Julius Caesar was said to employ as many as four secretaries at once on different projects. The Apostle Paul ,

26702-405: 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

26871-615: Was a sign of status. Despite the later importance of Confucian manuscripts, they were initially heavily resisted by the Qin dynasty. Though their accounts are likely exaggerated, later scholars describe a period of book burning and scholarly suppression. This exaggeration likely stems from Han dynasty historians being steeped in Confucianism as state orthodoxy. Similarly to the west, religious texts, particularly Buddhist, were transcribed in monasteries and hidden during "times of persecution". In fact,

27040-489: Was a task for educated slaves or for freedpersons who worked independently in bookshops. Books were a favored gift for friends, and since they had to be individually written out, "deluxe" editions, made from higher-grade papyrus and other fine materials, might be commissioned from intellectuals who also acted as editors. Unscrupulous copyists might produce and trade in unauthorized editions, sometimes passing them off as autograph manuscripts by famous authors. The literacy of

27209-414: 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

27378-457: 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

27547-512: 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,

27716-466: Was not merely or always a matter of need or necessity. Copying Buddhist sutras was a devotional practice ( shakyō ) . In the Nara period, wealthy patrons commissioned sutra copying on behalf of ancestors to gain them spiritual passage from the Buddhist hells . The Edo-period court noble Konoe Iehiro created a sutra manuscript in gold ink on dark blue paper, stating his purpose in the colophon as "to ensure

27885-482: Was represented except Esther . Numerous copies of each book were discovered, including 25 copies of the book of Deuteronomy . While there were other items found among the Dead Sea Scrolls not currently in the Hebrew Bible, and many variations and errors occurred when they were copied, the texts, on the whole, testify to the accuracy of the scribes. The Dead Sea Scrolls are currently the best route of comparison to

28054-407: 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

28223-563: Was text-based, monks were employed in scribal and bureaucratic work for their skill in writing and knowledge of Chinese culture. In portraits of Buddhist clerics, a handscroll is a symbol of scribal authority and the possession of knowledge. Government offices and Buddhist centers employed copyists on a wide scale, requiring an abundance of materials such as paper, glue, ink, and brushes; exemplars from which to copy; an organizational structure; and technicians for assembly, called sōkō or sō’ō . More than 10,000 Nara documents are preserved in

28392-634: 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

28561-410: Was too extensive and costly for books to become widespread during this period. Although scribes were only able to work in daylight, due to the expense of candles and the rather poor lighting they provided, monastic scribes were still able to produce three to four pages of work per day. The average scribe could copy two books per year. They were expected to make at least one mistake per page. During

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