One of the characteristic features of ancient Athenian democracy was its habit of displaying certain types of state documents on stone stelai – large rectangular slabs of marble. . . . Epigraphists who spend their time studying inscriptions have traditio

One of the characteristic features of ancient Athenian democracy was its habit of displaying certain types of state documents on stone stelai – large rectangular slabs of marble. . . . Epigraphists who spend their time studying inscriptions have traditionally assumed that these stone documents were copies of other, original records housed in archival collections. . . . One difficulty with this traditional view is the failure of Athenian sources to acknowledge the existence of archival originals.