Gregg W. Schwendner

This paper sketches the evidence for village literacy in Roman Egypt, specifically for Karnis, Soknopaiou Nesos, and Tebtynis.  Second, it discusses the quasi-documentary Acta Alexandrinorum as analogous to Q. Third, it describes the documentary phenomenon of "plain writing" (i.e. non cursive writing), that are often used for letter-writing and copies of official documents made for readers with a basic level of literacy. Finally, there is an appendix surveying examples of a sub-set of the Alexandrian Stylistic Class (Roberts' "Reformed Documentary") that use loops to connect internal strokes.

The planned Catalogue Raisonée of Greek Documents in Plain Writing will take months more to complete. In the meantime, I will post lists of the papyri and ostraca that will be in it. The next installment will be documents from the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian.

Introduction p. 11 Greek Texts p. 21
O.Bankes 1-14 p. 23 Excursus: Payments for merismoi p. 34 O.Bankes 15-45 p. 39 Excursus: On the Use of the Title Ἄριστος in Trajan’s Titulature p. 61 O.Bankes 46-70 p. 63 Excursus: Table of Important Syene Tax Collectors p. 80
Inventory Numbers of Items Only Described p. 89 Inventory Numbers of Items Not Dealt With in  is Volume p. 95 Indices p. 99

My project is to collect examples of "plain handwriting" in Greek from the Roman period. Nomenclature is part of the problem on both sides of the equation: by definition, I would call it a non-cursive, discrete lettering intended for readers for whom reading was an occasional rather than a professional activity. The reverse is also true: it is a style used by writers who are seldom called upon to use their handwriting, and whose writing resembles the most basic forms taught by teachers. Consqeuently, I have been obliged to pay close attention to school texts and poorly written documentary subscriptions. For this, i made use of recent advances in neurological and biomechanical approaches to handwriting, how it is learned and performed. Novice writers begin by trying to producing letter forms using visual motor integration (almost, but not quite the same as 'hand eye coordination'), consciously controlling the movement of the pen or stylus on ther basis of visual and sensory (proprioceptive) feedback. This kind of movement is called ramp movement, is relatively slow, with many starts and stops (velocity minima) per stoke. Once a novice writer has repeated the necessary strokes correctly for long enough, the movements become subconscious , or automatic, rather than consciously and visually etc controlled. At this point, writing begins to be produced by motor-programs stored and initiated in the premotor cortex and the portion of the fusiform gyrus called "Exner's area". (there is still much that is not about the details of this process, mostly on the level of the neuron, but, for example, it is now known that long held the tolerance of typogrpahical errors, e.g., which held that the brain processes the beginning and ends of words and its "shape" and not individual letter forms per se, is wrong.