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The spelling patterns reflected in ancient Greek inscriptions and papyri may be described as the product of an interwoven lattice of historical phonological developments and popular trends in scribal practice. This is perhaps no more evident than in the rise of popularity of the ῑ → ει spelling convention in Greek inscriptions and papyri around the Mediterranean during the Roman period. A close analysis of this scribal feature suggests that its increased popularity is not only the product of phonological changes, but also social, cultural, geopolitical, and what may be termed ‘socio-orthographic’ changes as well. In the ancient Mediterranean world, a change in the ruling administration of a particular region could also precipitate significant changes in scribal trends and scribal practice. In this paper, we explain the increased popularity of the ῑ → ει spelling convention during the Roman period in light of all these aspects.

Two Greek gospel manuscripts with an exegetical commentary in catena form present a text of Mark which ends in the middle of Mark 16.8. One is GA 304, a twelfth-century codex which is often adduced as a witness to the Short Ending. The other is the eleventh-century GA 239, which has not previously featured in discussions of the conclusion of Mark. In each case, it is shown that considerations of scribal practice, codicology and the broader traditions of text and catena mean that neither witness should be treated as evidence for the Short Ending as found in Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

Scholars have long been aware of the close relationship between two ninth-century Greek-Latin bilingual manuscripts, Codex Boernerianus (GA 012, VL 77) and Codex Augiensis (GA 010, VL 78). However, assessments of the nature of this relationship differ. The present article seeks to resolve this question by comparing full electronic transcriptions of the Greek texts of these manuscripts in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and First Timothy. An examination of the points of divergence, including unique readings, word division, corrections and lacunae confirm that their Greek text was either copied from the same exemplar, or that one served as exemplar for the other. Close analysis of the types of errors and the way in which corrections in Codex Boernerianus are handled in Codex Augiensis proves that the latter was copied from the former. These findings indicate that, as a copy of an existing manuscript, Codex Augiensis should no longer be cited in the apparatus of the Greek New Testament.

This article draws on documentary texts from multilingual archives of early Islamic Central Asia to illustrate connections between the Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal world. Here, I contend that some lesser-known evidence from Sogdia contributes new elements to current debates on the contact between Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal traditions and provides a measure of “intensity” of Arab rule in the region more generally. In particular, ostraca from various Transoxanian administrative centers provide documentary confirmation that a class of biliterate Arabic-Sogdian scribes was active in the local bureaucracy as early as the mid-8th century. When viewed in dialogue with archives from coeval Iran and Iraq, the Transoxanian evidence helps lead to a more nuanced understanding of the so-called “Pahlavi diplomatic substrate” model.

Abstract Qualities of the written sign impact the process of parsing a text, of making it accessible for vision, contemplation, recitation, and memory. In this article, I approach the manuscript as a visual field ordered by the configuration, combination, and differentiation of marks. This approach considers the particular challenges and potentialities that the space of the manuscript presents to a scribe as well as to a reader and how this blurs the boundaries between text and image. Through a case study of a Tibetan ritual manual, I illuminate the act of inscription as a technology with material, ritual, mnemonic, and pedagogical applications.

Les archives du roi Nestor offers scholars the long-awaited full scholarly edition of the Linear B documents found at Pylos from 1939 to date. For the first time—along with transliterations, information about size and number of fragments, find-spot, publication history and a critical apparatus—, each document is accompanied by drawings and colour photographs. The new analysis of the palaeography of the tablets has allowed considerable improvement of previously proposed transliterations and the suggestion of new readings. Moreover, it has enriched our knowledge of Mycenaean scribal practices by further clarifying the role of individual scribes in the administration chain of the Palace at Pylos. Finally, it has huge philological and historical implications. The following review article tries to discuss the main positions of the book, by contextualizing them in the field of research and by entering into more detailed discussion of some of them.

The study of the construction of social meaning in ancient Maya communities of Mesoamerica poses a variety of methodological problems in historical sociolinguistics due to the reliance on written records by means of a writing system that exhibits variation itself. While variation in writing systems has been previously studied in terms of diachronic shifts and dialectal variation, systematic approaches still remain elusive. This paper explores new avenues for the computational extraction of sociolinguistic features, resulting in the automatic extraction of useful sociolinguistic information from written corpora using Machine Learning algorithms. We show that these features can help illuminating the contribution of pragmatic choices in the selection of graphemes to stylistic practices that are key in the construction of Mayan scribal communities of practice.

In 2002 new \"Dead Sea Scrolls\" fragments began to appear on the antiquities market, most of them through the Kando family. In this article we will present evidence that nine of these Dead Sea Scrolls-like fragments are modern forgeries.

Abstract 4Q509/4Q496/4Q506 is the only opisthograph from Qumran with extant evidence for three different compositions: the recto preserves a copy of Festival Prayers (4Q509), and the verso contains copies of the War Scroll (4Q496) and Words of the Luminaries (4Q506). This article investigates the circumstances under which these texts were written down together, and explores a potential performative setting for this manuscript. Palaeographic and codicological examination indicates that the manuscript preserves extracts of these three compositions and shares similar scribal features on both the recto and verso. Literary and form-critical analysis suggests a performative context for Festival Prayers, Words of the Luminaries, and the War Scroll. Based on these considerations, I argue that different scribes wrote 4Q509, 4Q496, and 4Q506 intentionally together in order to create a liturgical collection on a single manuscript-highlighting the scribe as a collectionneur that purposely selected passages from different texts that were of importance.

This article investigates the prefatory material in 2 Maccabees (2:19-32; 15:38-39) in order to reveal the motivation and attitude of the epitomator of 2 Maccabees toward the text he is adapting. The article argues that the concept of auxiliary texts, recognized in Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic texts by classicist Markus Dubischar, is the lens through which to properly understand the preface and therefore the scribe's motivation for textual adaptation. The article further employs these conclusions to question whether other texts from the Judean milieu might also be best understood in this category.