paleographic

Paleography is the study of ancient and historical handwriting, focusing on decipherment, dating, and interpretation of manuscripts and inscriptions, as well as the material aspects of their production. The discipline seeks to identify scripts, scribal practices, and regional variations to understand when and where a document was created.

The term derives from Greek palaion, meaning old, and graphia, meaning writing. Paleography intersects with related fields such as philology, which studies language and meaning, and codicology, which examines the physical book as an object. While textual criticism works to reconstruct an authorial text, paleography provides the evidence about how and when that text was produced and transmitted.

Practices in paleography include analyzing letter forms, ligatures, notational devices, and writing materials such as parchment, papyrus, or paper. By comparing script styles to known historical hands, paleographers estimate dates and geographic origins, identify scribal hands, and locate marginalia or annotations that illuminate later receptions of a manuscript. Knowledge of material culture, including ink composition and binding, also informs dating and provenance.

The field covers a wide range of scripts across cultures, from ancient and medieval Latin and Greek to Arabic, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and East Asian traditions. In modern scholarship, imaging techniques, digital databases, and computer-assisted analysis are increasingly used to enhance reading, dating, and cataloging of manuscripts, expanding access and accuracy in paleographic work.