Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
epigraphy
References & Edit History Related Topics
Images
Neo-Assyrian clay tablet from the 7th century BC inscribed with dense cuneiform writing, known as the Flood Tablet from the Epic of Gilgamesh, displayed in the British Museum. Rock relief and inscription at Behistun, Iran, showing figures in profile and ancient script carved into a cliff. Stone tablet with rows of Hieroglyphic Luwian script carved in relief, showing intricate symbols and characters, from Turkey. Ashokan pillar Sumerian cuneiform tablet The Code of Hammurabi diorite stela, with carved figures at the top showing Hammurabi seated with cuneiform inscriptions below. Narmer Palette The first side of the Palermo Stone, a dark, irregularly shaped stone slab inscribed with rows of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Taking prisoners Persian cuneiform
Related Questions
Britannica AI Icon
Adding us as a Preferred Source tells Google you trust our content, so our articles show up more often in your Google Search, Discover feed, and AI Overviews.
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
print Print
Please select which sections you would like to print:
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what youā€™ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites

Inscriptions as historical source material

in

epigraphy

Written by
Jaan Puhvel
Emeritus Professor of Classics and Indo-European Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.
Jaan Puhvel
Fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
Britannica Editors
History
Ashokan pillar
Ashokan pillarInscription on Ashokan pillar, Lauriya Nandangarh, Bihar state, India.

In studying the political, administrative, legislative, and dynastic records of extinct civilizations, modern historians must bring to bear all the evidence at their disposal; and such evidence may vary sharply from one locality and period to another. Historiography in the modern senseā€”the analytical ordering and interpretation of past institutions and eventsā€”is an invention of ancient Greece, and even there it only gradually eschewed the fantastical. In many early societies (e.g., Mesopotamia, Egypt), chronographic records were either annalistic or legendary in kind and sometimes apologistic or propagandistic in purport; and in others (e.g., India) a cyclical world view prevailed, and a lack of feeling for linear time depth precluded an ordered appreciation of the past, leaving only legendryā€”in such cases only synchronisms with time-anchored events elsewhere allow a precise dating.

Thus, the amount of predigested ancient information bearing on antecedent events may vary from sophisticated literary to scrupulous epigraphic or may be wholly lacking or largely valueless. In the latter instances the historian is almost exclusively dependent for native information on primary documents, and such documents are in most cases inscriptional.