inscription

Record cut, engraved, or moulded on hard material such as stone, metal, or clay. The study of such inscriptions is called epigraphy. Inscriptions are found on many different materials, such as rock, metal, crystal, ivory, and gems, on temples, tombs, ancient buildings, vases, and seals.

Use In the Bible there are numerous references to writing on stone; Moses received the Law on stone tablets on Mount Sinai. Clay was the most common writing material among the ancient Mesopotamian peoples (see cuneiform); it was also used in Syria, Crete, and Mycenaean Greece, where many thousands of clay tablets have been unearthed, as well as in some other Near East countries. Bronze was used by Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans for the engraving of votive inscriptions, laws, and treaties. The earliest extant Chinese documents are on bronze or bone. India, and especially southern India, is rich in inscriptions of all kinds. Almost everything known of early south Arabian history and pre-Islamic northern Arabia is based upon numerous South Semitic inscriptions. Also important are the inscribed stone altars and the clay pottery of the ancient Mayas of Central America, and the wooden tablets of Easter Island, inscribed in a mysterious script.

Inscription in historical study In the course of the 19th century the discovery and decipherment of numerous inscriptions opened a new field of historical study, revealing the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia, Crete, and Mycenaean Greece, previously entirely unknown, or at best known only through the Bible or Graeco-Roman writers. Scores of scripts and languages, some unconnected with any surviving language, have been deciphered; grammars and dictionaries of previously unknown languages have been written; and many new aspects of historical cultures have been researched.

Greek and Latin inscriptions For the classical world, epigraphy is concerned mainly, but not exclusively, with inscriptions on stone; inscriptions on coins are the province of numismatics, while ostraca (see ostracon) are dealt with under papyrology (see papyrus). During the 19th century, epigraphy added to a historical picture previously based only on literary sources. Our view of Athens and its allies at its period of greatness, the second half of the 5th century BC, has been modified by detailed study of the Athenian Tribute Lists. The surviving inscriptions in Latin are mainly funerary, and provide details of families and the official careers of individuals.