Manuskripten
Manuskripten are handwritten texts produced before the advent of printing. They include literary works, religious texts, scientific treatises, legal documents, and personal letters. Manuscripts were created across cultures and periods, and were often copied and preserved in scriptoria or by scribes in monastic settings. Common materials included parchment and vellum, papyrus, and, later, paper. Writing surfaces used inks and pigments, with scripts ranging from classical Greek and Latin scripts to medieval Gothic hands and calligraphic traditions in the Islamic and East Asian worlds.
In Europe, manuscript culture flourished from late antiquity through the Middle Ages. Codices replaced scrolls, pages
Preservation and access have been transformed by digitization. Libraries and archives create high-resolution digital images and,
See also: codex, palaeography, codicology, manuscript culture, digitization.