Epigraphy (from the Greek: ἐπιγραφή epi-graphē, literally “on-writing”, “inscription”) is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be deduced concerning the writing and the writers. Specifically excluded from epigraphy is the historical significance of an epigraph as a document or the artistic value of a literary composition. (Wikipedia)
Epigrapher or Epigraphist is a person who utilize the methods of epigraphyan:
- Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating and dating the trilingual inscription and finding any relevant circumstances
- It is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document
- Often epigraphy and history are competances practiced by the same person; sometimes not.
An epigraph is any sort of text from a single grapheme, such as:
- a pot mark abbreviating the name of the merchant shipping commodities in the pot
- a lengthy document such as a treaty
- a work of literature such as a commemorative poem or a hagiographic prescription.
Epigraphy overlaps other competances such as:
- numismatics
- palaeography
Inscriptions
Most inscriptions are short compared to books
- The media and the forms of the graphemes can be any:
- engravings in stone or metal, scratches on rock,
- impressions in wax
- embossing on cast metal
- cameo or intaglio on precious stones
- painting on ceramic
- in fresco
- Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, such as the baking of a clay tablet
- Modern inscriptions might be:
- chalk graffiti on a sidewalk
- sky writing
- a tracing with the finger in the condensed moisture from a breath on glass
- in criminology less propitious media
- Traces of such temporary epigraphs preserved by chance are often of great interest as shown below:
The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum
Epigraphy history
- When dealing with literate cultures, epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology
- The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the “Auxiliary Sciences of History”
- Epigraphic evidence also helps identify a forgery.