Book excerpt: The Album of Armenian Paleography provides a comprehensive selection of some 200 definitively dated, handwritten texts, sampled from among the 30,000 manuscripts preserved in the major public collections of Europe, the Middle East, the former USSR and North America. Selected specimen pages from these manuscripts are presented in chronological order, and span the period from AD 862 to 1911. Each text is illustrated by a high-quality colour facsimile of a typical page, and is accompanied by an alphabet table for the folio in question and a sample transcription. All photographs are new, taken especially for the Album. Thanks to the large format of the volume it has been possible to show ail manuscript pages (except the very largest) in actual size. In addition, each facsimile page is accompanied by a colour enlargement of several lines of the text, enabling the reader to study the lettering in even greater detail.In a separate section, computerized tables are used to show changes in the forms of individual letters. By following the development of letter shapes, it is possible to discern the evolutionary process of the Armenian scripts in a far more detailed and sophisticated manner than the traditional division of the Armenian hands into types: erkat'agir, bologir, notrgir, Olagir, thereby providing much more precise datings than those previously available to scholars. The foundations are thus laid for a better understanding of the chronology of Armenian manuscripts and the literature and art they contain.This volume will be an indispensible tool for any serious student of the Armenian language, literature and art, and its innovative approach to the study of lettering will be ofinterest to paleographers and codicologists.