Palæography

We should like to have them collected by Dr. Young; whose acuteness and learning seem calculated to subdue the difficulties of palæography.

PALÆOGRAPHY. The study of antient documents, called by modern antiquaries ‘Palæography,’ is too extensive a subject to be canvassed at length in a work like the present.

Judging from the palæography of the inscriptions, they may have been in use from the age of Augustus to that of Marcus Aurelius, or even of Severus.

The study of the caligraphy, or penmanship, of ancient MSS. is replete with interest; and the art of deciphering ancient writings, or palæography, has received of late years some of the attention it deserves.

Palæography is the study of ancient handwriting from surviving examples.

1898, Joris-Karl Huysmans (translated by Clara Bell), The Cathedral, Chapter X Now they are editing and printing a musical Palæography, one of the most learned and abstruse of modern publications.

1913, Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11, “Palæography” The art of deciphering ancient writing in manuscripts or diplomas. It is distinguished from epigraphy, which provides rules for reading carved inscriptions, and from diplomatics which studies the intrinsic character of written documents, while palæography concerns itself only with written characters and the classification of documents by their external characters. […] palæography has become the basis of all study of historical, religious, or literary texts. There are as many branches of palæography as there are different kinds of writings, but the science of Oriental written characters is as yet hardly formed. […] Kopp, in his “Palæographia Critica”, laid the foundations for Oriental palæography, while devoting himself exclusively to Semitic languages.

The transition from Birc(h)- to Birt- is obscured by the palæography of -t(h)-, -c(h)-, undistinguishable in many sources.

Principles of palæography*— The value of palæontology; meaning of archæan land masses; search for ancient shore-lines; reconstruction of original […] ancient mountains.