PALEOGRAPHY 



703 



decipher them, but to judge of their date, genuine- 

 ne~s, and place of origin. While Epigraphy (see the 

 article INSCRIPTIONS) is concerned with writings 

 engraved on some hard substance, such as stone or 

 metal, the materials for pala?ographic study com- 

 prise ancient books, either rolls, volumina, written 

 on leather or papyrus, or codices, written in book 

 for.n on sheets of vellum or paper. Wax-tablets, 

 charters, bulls, decrees, acts, business papers, and 

 similar documents have also to be considered by 

 the student of paheography. 



The oldest extant manuscripts come from Egyp- 

 tian tombs, and are written on sheets of Papyrus 

 (<|.v. ), prepared from the pith of a rush. A few 

 fragments date from the time of the early empire, 

 the most important being the Papyrus Prisse, the 

 oldest book in the world, which was found in a 

 tomb of the llth dynasty, and must therefore be 

 older by several centuries than the Hebrew Exodus. 

 Coming d6wn to the 18th and 19th dynasties, papy- 

 rus rolls, usually containing portions of the Book of 

 the Dead (q.v.), are numerous. But documents 

 written on papyrus, a very fragile material, have 

 mostly perished, and the chief ancient MSS. which 

 have come down to us are written either on parch- 

 ment, which is still used for legal documents, or 

 on vellum ; the skins Iteing prepared so as to be 

 written on both sides, thus su|ierseding the older 

 leather rolls, still used in Jewish synagogues for 

 copies ot the Law. The necessary limits of this 

 article make it impossible to discuss the hieratic 

 and demotic papyri from Egyptian tombs, or any 

 of the Eastern scripts, Chinese, Pali, Indian, Coptic, 

 Syriac, Hebrew, or even the magnificent specimens 

 of Persian and Arabic calligraphy preserved in 

 oriental libraries. The student may, however, be 

 referred to the oriental series of the Paheographical 

 Society, to Silvestre's PaUographie U niuerselle, 

 and Burnell's Elements of South Indian Palaeo- 



graphy. It must here suffice to describe briefly 

 the Greek and Latin style, and the more important 

 of the mediaeval scripts. 



Both in Greek and Latin manuscripts we find 

 two contemporaneous but widely-different styles 

 of writing ; a book-hand, formal and stiff, but 

 legible, used by professional scribes, and a cursive 

 hand, rapid, careless, loose, and straggling, often 

 very difficult to read, which was employed for 

 private correspondence, contracts, accounts, and, 

 somewhat formalised, for charters, rescripts, and 

 other official documents. 



The book-hands may be classed as Capital, 

 Uncial, or Minuscule. "The capitals, which differ 

 little from the lapidary forms used in inscriptions, 

 are square and angular, such as are still retained 

 for initials, titles, and superscriptions. Manuscripts 

 written wholly in capitals are very rare, the use of 

 more facile materials, such as parchment or papyrus, 

 having led at a very early time to modifications of 

 the lapidary forms, transforming them into uncials, 

 a formal book-hand, large, clear, and legible, used 

 by professional acribes for codices, and derived from 

 the capitals with little change, save that the forms 

 are more rounded, and often inclined rather than 

 upright. Thus, C both in Greek and Latin is a 

 characteristic uncial form, obtained by rounding 

 the capital form E, and saving laliour by requiring 

 only two strokes of the pen instead of four. The 

 term Uncial is as old as the time of St Jerome, 

 but its modern usage is due to a misconception, 

 uncial letters being seldom an inch in height, as 

 the name implies. The general resemblance in the 

 character of Greek and Latin uncials will be seen 

 by a few words from St John, xxi. 19, as they 

 appear in the Cwlex Uezte at Cambridge, a manu- 

 script assigned to the 6th century, containing the 

 Gospels and Acts in Greek, with tne Vulgate trans- 

 lation. 



CeiTONGKl 



Greek. 



Ni5 q-uA coojcr e n o N 



Latin. 



Or, in ordinary minuscules, 



e ] 



if &oa<ret TOP Qfov, ' significans qua morte 

 honorificahit Deum.' 



In the 8th and 9th centuries a new book-hand 

 was evolved mainly out of the cursive, but incor- 

 porating sundry forms from the degenerate contem- 

 porary uncial. This, by reason of the smaller size of 

 the letters, is called minuscule. The old majuscule 

 cursive, developed out of the capitals and uncials, 

 which had l>y this time become formless and illegible, 

 was gradually superseded by a new cursive, devel- 

 oped out of the minuscule. The minuscule reached 

 its perfection as a hook-hand in the llth century, 

 after wlnca it continually degenerated till the 

 invention ot printing. Both for Greek and Latin 

 books the early printers adopted at first the cor- 

 rupted forms of the contemporary tank-hands, but 

 afterwards returned to the older and purer types 

 of the llth and 12th centuries. Thus there is a 

 general analogy between the successive stages of 

 Greek and Latin writing. Side by side with the 

 old cursive scripts there is a gradual evolution of 

 improved uncial book-hand* till about the 4th 

 century, foil owed by a period of decay, till the 9th 

 century, when the revival of learning produced a 

 regeneration, again followed by progressive deteri- 

 oration till the invention of printing caused a 

 reversion to the best <>f all preceding styles, that of 

 the llth cen tury. Traces of these revolutions may 



still be recognised. It will be observed that we 

 now employ four different alphabets : minuscules 

 for our printed books, arid capitals for their title- 

 pages, headings, and initials, and cursives for our 

 correspondence, while the initials in our ordinary 

 writing are analogous to uncials. Familiarity pre- 

 vents us from noting the wide differences in the 

 forms of such letters as A, a, a; B, b, b; G, g, a ; 

 or K, r, r. These are survivals, the first from the 

 lapidary capitals of the Augustan age, the second 

 from tlie Irench book-hand of the llth century, 

 and the third from the Tudor cursive, modified and 

 improved by the Italian cursive of the Elizabethan 

 age. 



Greek Palceography. No Greek manuscripts 

 written in pure capitals have come down to us, 

 though the transitional forms may be detected. 

 The oldest Greek manuscripts now extant are 

 papyri in early uncials of the Ptolemaic period 

 which have been found in Egypt, their preservation 

 ling due to the dryness of the climate, and to the 

 practice of burying documents in tombs. Three 

 must be earlier than 160 B.C., and there are 

 several Homeric fragments on papyri earlier than 

 the Christian era. 'The most important contain 

 Orations of Hyperides, of which the oldest are 

 assigned to the 1st century B.C. We have from 

 Herculanetim an ancient library consisting of 1803 

 papyrus rolls, which must be elder than 79 A.D.t 



