Doorworks 4: Why paleography matters

In case any of you were wondering why the study of handwriting matters, and why the elimination of the chair in paleography at King’s College London is a grave loss: Below is an image containing four discrete pieces of late medieval English writing (compiled together as a comparative collection). Can you decipher any of them?

Mystery
Mystery writing

Anyone who successfully deciphers all four may choose a topic or question on which I will write a future blog post.

Clue #1 (02/10/2010): All four words are in fact numerals.
Clue #2 (02/11/2010): They are Roman numerals, each six characters in length.

Author: schrisomalis

Anthropologist, Wayne State University. Professional numbers guy. Rare Words: http://phrontistery.info. Blog: http://glossographia.com.

7 thoughts on “Doorworks 4: Why paleography matters”

    1. Sol – Nope, although I will tell you that you are correct (possibly – I’ll explain later) that they all say the same thing.

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