Epigraphy is the auxiliary historical science that studies inscriptions on hard materials such as stone or metal, in contrast with palaeography, which deals with inscriptions made on perishable supports such as papyrus or parchment and also studies the evolution of writing. Epigraphy is always anonymous, addressed to an anonymous public.
Epigraphy as a discipline has existed since roughly the end of the fifteenth century. Its earliest practitioners were not only scholars but also merchants and travellers. The compilations of that period were drawn either from direct autopsy or from inscriptions the compilers had heard about.
The first epigraphists were simple compilers or humanists devoted to epigraphy who produced more-or-less scientific contributions.
By the close of the fifteenth century the evidential value of epigraphy had also become clear, useful for legitimising political or military ventures. Some inscriptions speak of events that never happened, fabricated to justify political and military motives or overseas colonisations.
Such forgeries were occasionally exposed, but in other cases they entered the bibliography and remained in circulation into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chronicles were built on them, contaminating scholarly circles in ways that still echo today. References to Tubal — grandson of Japheth and father of Iberus — are paradigmatic.
Cyriac of Ancona (1391–1455) is the founder of scientific epigraphy and the first to set himself the task of collecting as many inscriptions as possible. Scientific epigraphy proper, however, would not arrive until the Enlightenment. Only then were inscriptions catalogued and commented upon systematically.
Epigraphy often became an activity tied largely to ecclesiastical circles. The Vatican lapidary collection is one of the most important in the world (drawn from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). The practice of epigraphy was closely linked to the Church because of the Latin training it provided.
Among the researchers of the Enlightenment we find the Count of Lumiares, Gregorio Mayans — one of the finest experts in epigraphy — and the Marquess Scipione Maffei, who assembled a great collection. Many others followed in their footsteps and, in the nineteenth century, this interest crystallised into an international operation to compile epigraphic catalogues, centralised in Berlin (Prussian Academy).
This process affected texts unevenly: there was a current of interest in Latin inscriptions while Greek ones were largely set aside, except in Greek and Egyptian monasteries. There was virtually no history of Greek epigraphy until the nineteenth century, although it survived, more or less marginally, until then.
When it comes to inscriptions belonging to other cultures, circumstances are far more opaque. The newer interest stems from the absolute ignorance that prevailed until the work of Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832). The Rosetta Stone is only a first step: unlike cuneiform, for which we have a great many texts, we have fewer hieroglyphic ones, and Linear A has been only partially deciphered.
In the Near East, the cuneiform system can seem homogeneous but in fact comprises systems that share only one feature: the use of a sign system not understandable outside its own time. Almost all ancient writing systems were syllabic, with the exceptions of Latin and Greek. As a result, even when we know nothing of an ancient language we can at least tell that we are looking at a syllabic construction.
Epigraphy only makes sense in a setting where both the writer and the reader command a sign system that allows the writing to be understood and translated. This process is crucial — it is the only thing that guarantees that the inscription produces the intended message. Every inscription carries a message. When ancient, they are unique objects of which no copy exists.
Today's epigraphy is reproduced by mechanical means but is still used for the same purposes (street names and so on). In Antiquity there was a time when epigraphy was also produced by mechanical means: the maker's name would be stamped inside vessels. For that reason, when stamping becomes mechanical, the result ceases to be an inscription and becomes an instrument (instrumentum); it is no longer an individual piece.
Coins were minted using anvil, metal disc and hammer. The process was manual — no two coins were ever identical. Modern coins are still epigraphic objects.
A curious case is that of pipes, which carry inscriptions outside all the circumstances noted above: they were engraved with the names of their makers or of the cities they were destined for, but rather than being displayed, they were buried — an epigraphy intended not to be seen.
A first step when faced with an inscription is to read it, which is not always possible even when one has the code. We can read Roman inscriptions, yet in some ancient ones reading is not enough to understand the text, because the ancient world made use of abbreviations that are not always known. The reasons for them are varied: the size of the stone, economic considerations (the more letters, the higher the cost) or the engravers' poor command of the language (Latin declensions and so on).
Translation of the word EPIGRAPHY in various languages:
- German: Epigraphik
- French: Épigraphie
- Spanish: Epigrafía
- Italian: Epigrafia
- Polish: Epigrafika
- Portuguese: Epigrafia
- Romanian: Epigrafie
- Russian: эпиграфика
- Arabic: نقوش, دراسة النقوش
- Chinese: 金石学