Paleography

Paleography (from the Greek 'ancient writing') is an auxiliary historical-philological discipline that studies the history and external features of ancient writing: the forms of letters (graphics), the tools and materials of writing (papyrus, parchment, paper, ink), the decoration of manuscripts, watermarks, abbreviations, and ligatures. The main practical aim of paleography is the reading of ancient texts, as well as their dating and localization by the character of the script. Slavic (Cyrillic) paleography distinguishes historical types of script: ustav (the oldest, solemn, 11th–14th centuries), poluustav (semi-ustav, 14th–17th centuries), and skoropys (cursive, from the 15th century, a business hand). Knowledge of paleography is a necessary condition for the textologist's and medievalist's work with manuscript sources. The foundations of Ukrainian Cyrillic paleography were developed by Ivan Kamanin, Volodymyr Peretz, and Lidiia Dubrovina. A kindred discipline studying documents is diplomatics; watermarks are studied by filigranology.