paleography

Paleography ( ancient Greek παλαιός palaiós , German 'old' , and graphics ) is the study of ancient scripts . In terms of scientific organization, it is not located in linguistics , but as an auxiliary science of history (GHW) and as a sub-area of papyrology and Latin philology of the Middle Ages and modern times . Italic fonts of the early modern period and the more recent period fall into the field of archival science . Printed fonts fall into the field of paleotype or typography .

Tasks and methods

It is the task of palaeography to trace the lively development of writing in its details on the traditional written monuments. Paleographic knowledge helps to recognize the different fonts and letter forms in their development phases, in order to decipher historical scripts and to classify undated written and literary monuments spatially and temporally, possibly also to be able to identify writing schools or even individual scribes' hands. Documents that are assigned to well-known personalities in this way or on the basis of other information are called autographs .

The methods essentially consist in the analysis of the letter forms or the use of typical abbreviations . Both of these are often the only possible dating options, especially for inscriptions , since the writing material (unlike organic materials such as paper, parchment or leather) hardly provides any dating aids.

It differentiates between the various strings of script (the following examples are limited to the Near East and Europe): Egyptian palaeography with the typefaces of the Egyptian hieroglyphs , the hieratic , the demotic and the Coptic script , paleography of the ancient oriental cuneiform script , Phoenician palaeography , Aramaic and Syrian Paleography , Hebrew palaeography , Ethiopian paleography , Greek paleography , Cyrillic paleography , Latin paleography , Arabic paleography , paleography of the Germanic runes , etc. The teaching of historical forms of notation in music ( notation studies ) is also known as musical palaeography.

literature

Overarching presentations

Hartmut Günther, Otto Ludwig: Writing and writing. An interdisciplinary handbook of international research. = Writing and its use. An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research . 2 volumes. de Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1994–1996, ISBN 3-11-011129-2 , ISBN 3-11-014744-0 , ( Handbooks on Linguistics and Communication Science 10, 1–2).
Elias Avery Lowe : Paleographical Papers 1907-1965. Clarendon Press, Vol. 1-2, Oxford 1972.

Latin paleography

Bernhard Bischoff : Palaeography of Roman antiquity and the western Middle Ages . With a selection bibliography 1986–2008 by Walter Koch. 4th, revised and expanded edition. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-503-09884-2 , ( Basics of German Studies 24).
Franz Steffens : Latin palaeography. 125 plates in collotype with opposite transcription along with explanations and a systematic representation of the development of the Latin script. 2nd, increased edition. Schaar & Dathe, Trier 1909.
Michael Tangl : tablets for learning the Latin palaeography. Edited by Wilhelm Arndt . 3 volumes. 4th enlarged edition. Grote'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Berlin 1904–1907.

Germanistic paleography

Karin Schneider : Gothic writings in German . I .: From the late 12th century to around 1300 . Text tape and table tape. Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 1987, ISBN 3-88226-281-8 .
Karin Schneider: Gothic writings in German . II .: The Upper German writings from 1300 to 1350 . Text and chalkboard. Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-89500-603-6 .
Karin Schneider: Paleography and manuscript studies for Germanists. An introduction . Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1999 (= collection of short grammars of Germanic dialects. B, supplementary series 8), ISBN 3-484-64007-3 .
Jürgen Sydow : Palaeography of the Cologne coin inscriptions of the Middle Ages , Munich 1942, DNB 571284345 (dissertation University of Munich 1942, 131 pages).

Turkish paleography

Valery Stojanow: The Origin and Development of Ottoman-Turkish Paleography and Diplomatics. With a bibliography. Schwarz, Berlin 1983 ( digitized version ).

Digital paleography

Malte Rehbein , Patrick Sahle, Torsten Schaßan (eds.): Codicology and palaeography in the digital age. = Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age. BoD, Norderstedt 2009, full text , ISBN 978-3-8370-9842-6 . (Writings of the Institute for Documentology and Editing 2)
Franz Fischer, Christiane Fritze, Georg Vogeler (Eds.): Codicology and palaeography in the digital age 2 . BoD, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8423-5032-8 (publications of the Institute for Documentology and Editing 3)