RT Article
T1 Serto before Serto: Reexamining the Earliest Development of Syriac Script
JF Aramaic studies
VO 18
IS 1
SP 46
OP 63
A1 Penn, Michael Philip
A1 Abbott, Philip
A1 Crouser, R. Jordan
A2 Abbott, Philip
A2 Crouser, R. Jordan
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1699208484
AB Scholars have traditionally categorised early Syriac manuscripts as either Estrangela or Serto. The same categories dominate the prevailing narrative of how Syriac script is thought to have developed. Most see Estrangela as the earliest strata of Syriac and Serto as a later development. More recent scholarship explores how early manuscripts support neither this stark division between script styles nor a sequential development. Of particular challenge to this paradigm are a series of securely dated colophons and notes which use a script style different than the main part of the text. But previous work has looked at only five examples of this phenomenon. By expanding this investigation to 30 examples and drawing upon a recent compiled digital corpus of over 100,000 early Syriac letter forms, the present article explores how large data sets, digital analysis, and visual analytics can help one better understand the development of Aramaic scripts.
K1 Aramaic script
K1 Syriac
K1 COLOPHONS
K1 digital palaeography
K1 Palaeography
K1 visual analytics
DO 10.1163/17455227-bja10001