Paleography Examples

[EINFÜGEN: Tableau 1: Beispiele für literarische Dokumente, nach Jahrhunderten geordnet, 4. Jh. v.Chr. – 8. Jh. n.Chr.; Tableau 2: Beispiele für dokumentarische Dokumente, nach Jahrhunderten geordnet, 4. Jh. v.Chr. – 8. Jh. n.Chr.; Einführungstext s. unten]

As a rule, ancient texts are written in continuous letters (scriptio continua), that is to say, without spaces between words. More often than not punctuation is omitted, too. Largely, in Greek papyrology two kinds of scripts are distinguished. On the one hand the so called “bookhands” were commonly used for literary texts, on the other hand cursive forms of the letters were typical of everyday documents such as contracts, letters, receipts, etc. Furthermore other kinds of writing could be used for special purposes: the bureaus of high roman officials, for example, produced occasionally documents in the so called “chancellery writing”. In antiquity until the byzantine time both bookhands and cursive writings were majuscule alphabets, which means, they have been written only with capital letters. The two kinds of script can be distinguished mainly because the cursive one is a more fluent and consequently rapid writing, whose typeface inclines often to the right. Accordingly, the writing of everyday documents is characterized by ligatures and Verschleifungen, whereas literary handwritings show higher care towards a neat and precise shaping of each letter. Both writing systems developed over the centuries, whereby cursive writings evolved more quickly and more often than bookhands. A paleographical analysis of the writing is thus one of the parameters –often the only one– to date a text. The Berlin Papyrus Collection disposes of writing examples from all centuries of the Greco-Roman Era. A selection of the most representative pieces can be found here.