Meaning of the word "paleography". The specifics of science

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:47

Recently, people began to lose their passion for knowledge, including the historical sciences. As a result, many of us do not even know the meaning of the word "paleography". Palaeography is a historical and philological science that studies the history of writing, the patterns of its development among different nations and visual forms of writing.

The lexical meaning of the word "paleography"

Palaeography as a science studies the history of writing in general, but also includes some additional branches, such as cryptography (the study of ancient cryptography), filigree (the study of ornament) and others.

History has been and remains the most confusing and obscure discipline of all. Its goal is to get to the bottom of things, which in some cases, alas, is impossible. Invaluable assistance in historical analysis to historians is provided by chronicles - historical documents that give a chronological sequence of events of those years.

Paleography is primarily an auxiliary science that facilitates the study of the samehistory itself. The meaning of the word "paleography" can be isolated from its composition. "Paleos" from Greek means "important, significant", and "grapho" means "to write".

Specific paleography

Due to the narrow specialization of this field, a good paleographer must be knowledgeable in areas related to paleography. History, literary criticism, art history require the help of paleographers. Ancient records, ornaments, watermarks, manuscripts - all this is studied by these experts.

The meaning of the word "paleography" includes not only the humanities. Around the beginning of the 20th century, paleographers began to use the achievements of the natural sciences. With the help of chemical analysis methods, the composition of the ink and paints with which the text was written is studied, and color photography methods make it possible to identify and disassemble semi-faded characters under the influence of rays of a special color spectrum.

Sphere of work of scientists

The meaning of the word "paleography" is often mistakenly identified with forensic science. Actually, this is not entirely true. Palaeography deals mainly with the analysis of texts that have the status of ancient. If the text does not have any value for research as it is not old enough, this manuscript is considered a fake.

The sphere of work of paleographers is not limited to paper and papyri - rock painting, cuneiform writing, inscriptions on monuments of history and culture are also studied,household items, dishes, coins and so on.