Palaeographers study ancient writing. A London University just canned the last remaining palaeographer in the country. People are not pleased (particularly, I imagine, the palaeographer). John Crace, in The Guardian, writes about why studying ancient writing is important.
From the piece...
"Without a palaeography professor such as David Ganz, not only will King's be sorely deprived of a basis on which to teach almost every other university discipline," says Alexandra Maccarini, "but the study of humanities everywhere will suffer from the absence of a devoted specialist in the subject."
In its strictest sense, palaeography is the study of ancient manuscripts whereby scholars can read texts – often partial, as many exist only in fragments – and localise and date handwriting accurately. This may sound arcane, and to some extent it is. But it is also the building block of all classical and medieval scholarship. According to Ganz: "Anyone who goes into a university library will within a week find an ancient manuscript that no one has yet properly understood."
"It is academic forensic science," agrees Dr Irving Finkel, assistant keeper in the department of the Middle East at the British Museum. "Many of the printed texts we use today – be they the Bible, Livy's poems or Shakespeare's plays – do not come from a single text. They are a collation of various manuscripts that may have been altered by scribes over time. A palaeographer can help determine which is likely to be the most authentic.
"It's about understanding the codes, the signs and the ligatures [common abbreviations] that were in use at different periods of a language's evolution, so you can interpret words that may have been rubbed away and see what may have been added at a later date."
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