Paleography

learning to read the hand

about

One line cut from the manuscript page

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The same line, in print

Your reading

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The ink

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A prototype. Three witnesses, a few dozen lines each, and a transcription apparatus still being checked: where a sign's expansion has not been verified against a source it says so on its face. Corrections and objections are wanted.

Manuscript images. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 940 — images courtesy of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, by IIIF. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. graec. 23 — digitised by Heidelberg University Library. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. O. 41.

Ground truth CC BY 4.0 — Eutyches (Pandelidis); ecrinum/anthologia; HTR Winter School Vienna 2024. Catalogued by HTR-United. Abbreviations checked against Cappelli, Lexicon Abbreviaturarum (1929) and Thompson, Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (1912).

Lines are cut from the page facsimiles along the ground-truth baselines; material outside the line in hand is blurred, not removed. Your progress and reading data stay in this browser unless you tick the box under What you are getting wrong — and even then only the letter confusions and per-line accuracy are sent, never what you typed, with no name, account or cookie attached.

Found something wrong? Report this line — sends the line's shelfmark and folio, and whichever gloss it showed you, so it can be checked against the plate. Or write about the tool.

Made alongside Wroot Press, which publishes translations from the manuscripts these hands were written in.