epigraphy

Introduction & Top Questions
Materials and techniques
Inscriptions as historical source material
- Ancient Mesopotamia
- Ancient Egypt
- Other ancient Middle Eastern regions
- Ancient Iran
- Ancient India
- Ancient China
- Ancient Greece
- Ancient Rome
- The Turkic peoples
- Northern Europe
Inscriptions as social and cultural records
- Ancient Mesopotamia
- Ancient Egypt
- The Hittite Empire
- Other countries of the ancient Middle East
- Crete and Mycenaean Greece
- Classical Greece
- Ancient Rome
The use of inscriptions
- The dating of historical events
- The decipherment of ancient languages
History of epigraphy
- Greek and Latin inscriptions
- Other inscriptions

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.

Stone tablet with rows of Hieroglyphic Luwian script carved in relief, showing intricate symbols and characters, from Turkey.

The Code of Hammurabi diorite stela, with carved figures at the top showing Hammurabi seated with cuneiform inscriptions below.

The first side of the Palermo Stone, a dark, irregularly shaped stone slab inscribed with rows of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Related Questions

How can an inscription’s language provide clues about its age?
How can different historical narratives be written from the same set of true events?
How can the style of writing help scholars date an inscription?
How did Confucian ideas influence early Chinese historical writing?
How did Egypt’s dry climate help preserve papyrus records?
How did Greek inscriptions record business agreements and legal decisions?
How did Hittite records document religious rituals and festivals?
How did Michael Ventris decipher Linear B in 1953?
How did Thucydides evaluate eyewitness accounts of the Peloponnesian War?
How did the Monumentum Ancyranum preserve Augustus’s account of his rule?
How do archaeologists date an inscription found during an excavation?
How do archival inscriptions differ from monumental inscriptions?
How do historians use inscriptions alongside literary sources and archaeological evidence?
How do historians use oral traditions to study societies without written records?
How do inscriptions from Pompeii provide evidence about Vulgar Latin and ordinary Romans?
How do inscriptions help establish dates for events in ancient India?
How does epigraphy differ from paleography?
How does historiography differ from simply listing events in chronological order?
How does stratigraphy help date ancient inscriptions?
How have nontraditional sources helped historians study ordinary people and marginalized groups?
How were ancient inscriptions carved, stamped, painted, and cast?
What did Linear B tablets prove about the Mycenaeans and the Greek language?
What do temple inscriptions reveal about religion and finance in Classical Greece?
What do the Boğazköy archives reveal about the Hittite Empire?
Which languages appear in Hittite ritual texts?
Which languages were used in Achaemenid royal inscriptions?
Why are bilingual inscriptions especially useful for deciphering ancient languages?
Why did Roman inscriptions often use abbreviations?
Why did Thucydides believe his history of the Peloponnesian War would remain useful?
Why did clay tablets survive in some ancient cities after fires?
Why do historians critically examine sources before writing about the past?
Why is the Res gestae divi Augusti an important Roman historical inscription?
Why were Linear B tablets from Knossos, Pylos, and Mycenae preserved?
What is epigraphy?
How does epigraphy help us learn about the past?
Why is it important to study inscriptions found in their original locations?

Philosophy & Religion Humanities

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epigraphy

historiography

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....

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History

epigraphy, the study of written matter recorded on hard or durable material. The term is derived from the Classical Greek epigraphein (“to write upon, incise”) and epigraphē (“inscription”). Because such media were exclusive or predominant in many of the earliest human civilizations, epigraphy is a prime tool in recovering much of the firsthand record of antiquity. It is thus an essential adjunct of the study of ancient peoples; it secures and delivers the primary data...

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