Antony Eastmond, ed. Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World. Cambridge University Press, 2015

From Cambridge University Press

Inscriptions convey meaning not just by their contents but also by other means, such as choice of script, location, scale, spatial organisation, letterform, legibility and clarity. The essays in this book consider these visual qualities of inscriptions, ranging across the Mediterranean and the Near East from Spain to Iran and beyond, including Norman Sicily, Islamic North Africa, Byzantium, medieval Italy, Georgia and Armenia. While most essays focus on Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, they also look back at Achaemenid Iran and forward to Mughal India. Topics discussed include real and pseudo-writing, multilingual inscriptions, graffiti, writing disguised as images and images disguised as words. From public texts set up on mountainsides or on church and madrasa walls to intimate craftsmen's signatures, barely visible on the undersides of precious objects, the inscriptions discussed in this volume reveal their meanings as textual and visual devices.

Contents:

Introduction: viewing inscriptions
Antony Eastmond

Text, image, memory, and performance: epigraphic practices in Persia and the ancient Iranian world
Matthew P. Canepa

Prayers on site: the materiality of devotional graffiti and the production of early Christian sacred space
Ann Marie Yasin

Erasure and memory: Aghlabid and Fatimid inscriptions in North Africa
Jonathan Bloom

Textual icons: viewing inscriptions in medieval Georgia
Antony Eastmond

Pseudo-Arabic 'inscriptions' and the pilgrim's path at Hosios Loukas
Alicia Walker

Arabic inscriptions in the Cappella Palatina: performativity, audience, legibility, and illegibility
Jeremy Johns

Intercession and succession, enlightenment and reflection: the inscriptional and decorative program of the Qaratay Madrasa, Konya
Scott Redford

Remembering Fernando: multilingualism in medieval Iberia
Tom Nickson

Displaying the word: words as visual signs in the Armenian architectural decoration of the monastery of Noravank (fourteenth century)
Ioanna Rapti

Written in stone: civic memory and monumental writing in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa
Stefania Gerevini

Place, space, and style: craftsmen's signatures in medieval Islamic art
Sheila S. Blair

Afterword: re-viewing inscriptions
Antony Eastmond