Most traffic signs in the Middle East today bear city names transcribed in Latin characters, making them familiar to all. It was the opposite in the 7th c. with the Hellenisation of the East Roman Empire and the Arab conquest of the Levant. The Latin script disappeared from the monumental graphic landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean. Progressively until the Ottoman expansion in the 16th c., pilgrims, merchants, crusaders from the West re-established hospices, churches, castles, and placed on monuments and artefacts inscriptions and graffiti using the Latin alphabet, i. e. signs now exogenous. They attempted through stone, painting, mosaic and metal to appropriate graphically, spatially and symbolically, parts of the East, including the Christian holy places.
At present, scholarly study of these medieval inscriptions in the Eastern Mediterranean faces 3 problems: 1) the lack of a comprehensive corpus of inscriptions; 2) the notion commonly accepted by medievalists of the “Latin East”, which suggested a rather smooth and uniform Latinisation; 3) a perspective that views Latin epigraphy as something static and fails to take account of the pluralist linguistic and graphic environment of the East.
GRAPH-EAST aims to change this paradigm by creating a new body of knowledge of Latin epigraphic writing in the Eastern Mediterranean (7th-16th c.) through the exploration of an extremely rich body of texts: an estimated 3000 inscriptions and graffiti. The project intends to take up 3 challenges to decompartmentalise epigraphy and make it dynamic by 1) reuniting inscriptions and graffiti; 2) broadening graphic environment: scripts in contact; 3) demonstrating epigraphy in motion.
The aim is to create a new field of research focused on Latin epigraphic writing in the East during the long Middle Ages and, through 4 objectives, to offer an "ecological" vision of epigraphy. This metaphor, used for its heuristic value, allows us to see the inscription as an organism interacting with its natural environment, and to understand its ecosystem. It aims at 1) exploring the “cycle” of the epigraphic object, production, reception, interpretation; 2) understanding the representation and practice of the Latin writing system in the East from a palaeographic, linguistic, sociological and sociographic point of view; 3) proposing a connected history of epigraphy, taking into account the surrounding writings (Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew etc.); and 4) analyzing migrant writing between West and East.
This project will highlight a little-known discipline and texts in the public sphere, and change public perception of the inscriptions. It will raise awareness among the scientific community, the cultural and political actors and the general public about the importance to conduct a broad reflection on the heritage issues of this fragile material and, in some region, in danger.
