Epigraphy : from Epigraphé, "written onto something"

Inscription : from inscriptio, covers very well the Greek meaning, but only later it ended up defining what we so call, while the ancient called these texts on objects tituli


S. Panciera has given a complete discussion of the issue of defining epigraphy and what inscriptions are in a recent article and here are some quotations from that about definitions.

“In reality, the words we use are no longer the ancient ones but are instead the products of the recovery and transformation of them into technical terms by humanists – at first ‘inscription’, between the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century, and then ‘epigraph’ at the end of the seventeenth century. (The neologisms ‘epigraphy’ and ‘epigraphist’ began to be used only in the nineteenth century.) “

Definitions can be based on material distinctions, like:

“all the original writing of the Roman era that has come down to us on durable materials.”
or on execution techniques, i.e. epigraphy deals with documents written with subtractive techniques.

Definitions can also be based on immaterial distinctions:

“Instead of the external physical properties of the written product, the focus in this case is on the intentions that determined it, thus on internal characteristics, among which may be noted as especially significant the desire to perpetuate memory, the intention to communicate something publicly, and the aim of self-representation.”

Panciera concluds that we could

regard as an ‘inscription’ any particular type of written human communication of the sort that we would today call unidirectional, in the sense that it does not anticipate that a response will be provided to the sender, and which has the characteristic of not being addressed to a person or to a group but to a collectivity, and which for this reason is made with the location, writing technique, graphic form and impagination, mode and register of expression chosen because they are most suitable to the attainment of its intended goal, and which differentiates itself in this manner from other forms of contemporary verbal communication (oral, literary, or documentary). With this I reaffirm the concept of epigraphic writing as writing that is deviant (according to the time and place, naturally) in that it adopts a form of writing that is different, in its medium or technique or both, according to its intended purpose. At the same time, how- ever, I also want to call greater attention to the other essential and peculiar characteristic of an inscription, namely its address to a collectivity.

Room 0: Introduction

Room 1: Inscriptions and history

Room 2: Script and Alphabets

Room 3: Objects and the relation between image, text and context

Room 4: Emotions in inscriptions

Room 5: The stone cutter, methods and mistakes

Room 6: Digital technologies for epigraphy

Credits