paleographyArticle Free Pass Analysis of texts The Greek and
Latin alphabets existed originally as capital, or majuscule,
letters. The ancient Greek alphabet, as developed in chiselled
inscriptions on stone or marble, served without much
modification as the alphabet used in literary works written on
papyrus rolls. This script, found in the oldest surviving Greek
literary papyri of c. 300 bc or earlier, gave way to more
rounded and elegant forms, probably developed in the Greek
literary circles of Alexandria. Cursive scripts that were easier
to write were developed for everyday use, for business, and to
record the acts of the great bureaucracy of Egypt, where the
Greeks settled in large numbers. The Greek cursive script and
the formal book script greatly influenced each other, as can be
seen from a vast series of cursive documents dating from the 4th
century bc for about 1,000 years. Because so much material
survived, early Greek cursive can be better studied than its
Latin counterpart. In Greek cursive manusc