Periodic Reporting for period 3 - GRAPH-EAST (Latin as an Alien Script in the Medieval Latin East)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2024-02-01 do 2025-07-31
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.
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.
The first step was to create a corpus as exhaustive as possible, using a specific and common protocol which is the backbone of the database (WP1). The data harvest, still in progress, has already resulted in more than 1,500 items from the ten Eastern Mediterranean countries covered by the project. This is the result of 15 field missions in Cyprus, Greece and the islands, Turkey, Israel and Palestine, but also in France and Italy, where some inscribed stones and artefacts were moved to. All the data are currently recorded in a database created for the project with HEURIST (WP2).
All this material has been analyzed through different angles during the 6 workshops and conferences organized by the project; 28 papers were also given as invited members; these meetings gradually have led to the creation of an international network of epigraphers (WP3). 7 articles have been published, and 12 other articles or chapters are also forthcoming, exploring the four main objectives. To give an example, the article entitled "The 'palimpsest' inscription of Larnaca Castle. An interdisciplinary methodological tour de force", written in 2021 by six members of the team, provides a good overview of the methodology developed. It deals with a phenomenon rarely studied in epigraphy: a lapidary palimpsest. The analysis of this medieval tomb, which accumulates layers of writing, provided an opportunity to test the project's multi-disciplinary method: from the material to the tools used by the craftsmen who made the tombs, from the evolution of the letterforms to the transformations of Old and Middle French, from the changes in the way the epitaphs on the tomb were staged to those in the costume of the deceased, from the textual content to the genealogy of a Cypriot family in the 14th century and its coat of arms: a holistic view of the object is provided, thanks to the team's multiple skills.
A research blog (https://grapheast.hypotheses.org/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) and a Twitter and Instagram feed provide good visibility to the project. A documentary realized during the mission in Cyprus shows the epigraphers in the field, discovering inscriptions and testing their methodology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu2paElHYcc(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). An interview was also made by France 3 Aquitaine on the work made on the graffiti and inscriptions in Jerusalem and Bethlehem: WP4(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie).
All this material has been analyzed through different angles during the 6 workshops and conferences organized by the project; 28 papers were also given as invited members; these meetings gradually have led to the creation of an international network of epigraphers (WP3). 7 articles have been published, and 12 other articles or chapters are also forthcoming, exploring the four main objectives. To give an example, the article entitled "The 'palimpsest' inscription of Larnaca Castle. An interdisciplinary methodological tour de force", written in 2021 by six members of the team, provides a good overview of the methodology developed. It deals with a phenomenon rarely studied in epigraphy: a lapidary palimpsest. The analysis of this medieval tomb, which accumulates layers of writing, provided an opportunity to test the project's multi-disciplinary method: from the material to the tools used by the craftsmen who made the tombs, from the evolution of the letterforms to the transformations of Old and Middle French, from the changes in the way the epitaphs on the tomb were staged to those in the costume of the deceased, from the textual content to the genealogy of a Cypriot family in the 14th century and its coat of arms: a holistic view of the object is provided, thanks to the team's multiple skills.
A research blog (https://grapheast.hypotheses.org/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)) and a Twitter and Instagram feed provide good visibility to the project. A documentary realized during the mission in Cyprus shows the epigraphers in the field, discovering inscriptions and testing their methodology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu2paElHYcc(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). An interview was also made by France 3 Aquitaine on the work made on the graffiti and inscriptions in Jerusalem and Bethlehem: WP4(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie).
The progress of the project is not simply a matter of bringing together all the epigraphic texts of the ten countries of the Eastern Mediterranean according to the same analytical criteria, but also of the discovery of many previously unknown or unpublished inscriptions and graffiti. To give some examples: hundreds of graffiti on the walls and columns in pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land (in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in particular); the nineteenth-century manuscript of Piacenza (Italy) containing epitaphs and drawings of several Cypriot funerary slabs of the 13th-15th c.; the access to the storage of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums to study the Genoese lapidary collection. An outstanding body of texts estimated of 3,000 inscriptions and graffiti is expected. By the end of the project, they will all be available on open access online in accurate and up-to-date editions.
Another achievement is the work on the graphic signs in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, thanks to the major restoration campaign of church in 2013-2020, and gathering historians, art historians and conservators to explore these signs in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Cyrillic, and the question of the scripts in contact, which is the core of the project. This is the first step to create an international and interdisciplinary team of experts, with a real synergy, producing stronger results and opening a vast and advanced area of investigation (WP3).
A summer school in medieval epigraphy, along with the formation of new epigraphers, is scheduled for July 2024, in order to train doctoral and early-career scholars, to provide theoretical and practical training in epigraphy to advance the knowledge of Medieval Latin inscriptional culture and its contributions to the overall heritage of Europe and Mediterranean, and to create a network of young researchers in medieval epigraphy.
After the documentary series, a virtual exhibition in partnership with the Museum of Cluny is also planned for the last year of the project and is already in preparation with missions in the storages of the Museum. This exhibition will give the general public access to works from the Latin East that are no longer on display following the renovation of the Museum (WP4).
Another achievement is the work on the graphic signs in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, thanks to the major restoration campaign of church in 2013-2020, and gathering historians, art historians and conservators to explore these signs in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Cyrillic, and the question of the scripts in contact, which is the core of the project. This is the first step to create an international and interdisciplinary team of experts, with a real synergy, producing stronger results and opening a vast and advanced area of investigation (WP3).
A summer school in medieval epigraphy, along with the formation of new epigraphers, is scheduled for July 2024, in order to train doctoral and early-career scholars, to provide theoretical and practical training in epigraphy to advance the knowledge of Medieval Latin inscriptional culture and its contributions to the overall heritage of Europe and Mediterranean, and to create a network of young researchers in medieval epigraphy.
After the documentary series, a virtual exhibition in partnership with the Museum of Cluny is also planned for the last year of the project and is already in preparation with missions in the storages of the Museum. This exhibition will give the general public access to works from the Latin East that are no longer on display following the renovation of the Museum (WP4).