Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Paleography

Paleography, or the study of ancient writing and the dating and deciphering of old manuscripts, has always been an intriguing and vital part of recognizing historical occurrences. Much of paleographic progress has been due to the Rosetta Stone, the ancient Egyptian stele inscribed with three lingual translations that allowed accurate transcriptions to be made between the previously indecipherable scripts of Demotic, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Ancient Greek. It is difficult to imagine how historical examination would have progressed without Napoleon's fortunate discover of the Stone; the largest portion of historical knowledge is attributed to found samples of writing. Writing is one of the most powerful tools of recording, shaping, and examining history, and provides the clearest and most accurate depiction of ancient life otherwise merely hinted at through archaeological excavations. Even with the discovery of the thousand year old Rosetta Stone (which in itself is a marvel of paleographic aptitude), paleography has always seemed of the most difficult aspects of history. Imagine holding a thousand year old tablet weathered by wind, rain, and chafing sand, faced with the seemingly monumental task of drawing any semblance of meaning from the nearly invisible scratches in the stone.


Paleography is especially challenging because throughout history, the alphabet has constantly evolved, especially emphasized as the ancient world began to rely more heavily on writing for economic and political purposes and began to adapt the alphabet to better meet their needs.  Furthermore, scribes often used abbreviations, ligatures, and strange punctuation, thus further complicating the text. To me however, independent of the seemingly smaller issues encountered by paleography, I wonder how do you even start? How do you look at a single small line engraved in a weathered, thousand year old tablet and piece it together to reach a conclusion about their daily life, enough to construct a digital model of their world and determine that one day in October some thousands of years ago, a merchant bought sixteen amphoras of olive oil. I feel bad for my teachers when they have to read my chicken-stratch essays on tests, but at least I am trying to and hopefully achieving writing in modern English. It is baffling to me that a group of historians could look at ancient writing and bring entire worlds into being. Go paleography!

No comments:

Post a Comment