Inscriptions provide an invaluable amount of information on the ancient world. The Classics Department of the University of Chicago offers graduate students both an introduction to epigraphy and advanced courses that will allow them to fully master the techniques of the discipline. Through courses, seminars, workshops, and conferences, students will familiarize themselves with the employment of inscriptions. They will be strongly encouraged to criss-cross the several fields of classics, in order to perceive how inscriptions can contribute to the understanding of literary texts, papyri or archaeological evidence, and the other way round. They will be able to specialize on themes where epigraphy is a privileged mode of approach of the ancient civilizations.
Some of the key themes on which inscriptions can offer information are:
- History, institutions and religion. It is, for instance, thanks to inscriptions that we can get a detailed knowledge of political or economic institutions of the Greek states (cities or kingdoms) or of civic or popular religion in the ancient world in general. In some privileged cases, inscriptions give us also a hint to private beliefs or behaviors.
- Local cultures. For whole regions of the ancient world, epigraphy represents the bulk of written sources. This is the case, for instance, for Asia Minor or the Black Sea. Thanks to inscriptions, it is now possible to get a better understanding of the local cultures of these regions and of their interaction with the dominating Graeco-Roman one.
- Language. Epigraphy provides a unique mode of apprehension of ancient languages. This is the case, for instance, for the Greek language, where inscriptions provide the bulk of our information on dialects and their evolution. Inscriptions also provide a unique source of information on the pre-Greek languages of Asia Minor (see above also).
- Literature. Most of the ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions are in prose. Their style can provide some useful parallels to the most famous pieces of literature. But there is also a significant corpus of metric inscriptions, in Greek or in Latin. They illustrate the literary aspirations of large categories of populations of the ancient world.
People
The following faculty-members represent those who are experts in the interpretation of inscriptions. There are additional faculty-members who are experts in the related fields of Papyrology and Classical Archaeology.
Associated Faculty:
- Theo van den Hout (NELC: Hittite History)
- Janet Johnson (NELC: first millennium BCE Egypt) Ancient Societies Workshop