Graffiti

This chapter offers an overview of graffiti in ancient Egypt from an epigraphic perspective, highlighting the points of contact and divergence between this and other epigraphic categories. In the introduction graffiti are defined as a distinct, yet fuzzy, category comprising both texts and drawings. The wide range of their quality, formality, visibility, and context accounts for the challenge that finding a terminology suitable for all graffiti presents. After a brief history of graffiti recording, the chapter focuses on some technical aspects of their documentation, which is schematically presented as a four-stage procedure: survey, recording, collation, and post-recording process. Issues of identifying, recording, and publishing graffiti are discussed within the article’s subsections with references to old methods and new technologies.