page_title: Colophon (publishing)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Colophon (publishing) / History
context_page_description: In publishing, a colophon is a brief statement containing information about the publication of a book such as the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication. A colophon may include the device of a printer or publisher. Colophons are correctly printed at the ends of books, but sometimes the same information appears elsewhere and many modern books bear this information on the verso of the title-leaf, which is sometimes called a "biblio-page" or the "copyright-page".
context_section_description: The term colophon derives from the Late Latin colophōn, from the Greek κολοφών (meaning "summit" or "finishing touch"). 
  The existence of colophons can be dated back to antiquity. Zetzel, for example, describes an inscription from the 2nd century A.D., transmitted in humanistic manuscripts. He cites the colophon from Poggio's manuscript, a humanist from the 15th century:
  Statili(us) / maximus rursum em(en)daui ad tyrone(m) et laecanianu(m) et dom̅ & alios ueteres. III.
  (‘I, Statilius Maximus, have for the second time revised the text according to Tiro, Laecanianus, Domitius and three others.’)
  Colophons can be categorized into four groups. Assertive colophons provide the contextual information about the scribe and manuscript. Expressive colophons demonstrate the scribe's feelings and wishes. Directive colophons make the reader do something, and the declarative colophons do something with the reader.
  Examples of expressive colophons:
  Finit dicendo: Ludid. Quicunque scriptor scribit / Leti ut scribunt scribae.
  ("He finishes saying, “Every scribe who writes has fun, for writing scribes are happy ones”.) 
  "I have made an end at last, and my weary hand can rest."
  Example of directive colophons:
  O beatissime lector, lava manus tuas et sic librum adprehende, leniter folia turna, longe a littera digito pone.
  ("O most gracious reader, wash your hands and touch the book only like this: turn the pages softly and keep your finger far away from the text".)
  Example of directive and declarative colophons:
  Si quis et hunc sancti sumit de culmine galli / Hunc Gallus paulusque simul dent pestibus amplis
  ("If anybody takes this book from Gall’s estate, Gall and Paulus together shall inflict the plague upon him".)
  The term is also applied to clay tablet inscriptions appended by a scribe to the end of an Ancient Near East (e.g., Early/Middle/Late Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite) text such as a chapter, book, manuscript, or record. The colophon usually contained facts relative to the text such as associated person(s) (e.g., the scribe, owner, or commissioner of the tablet), literary contents (e.g., a title, "catch phrases" (repeated phrases), or number of lines), and occasion or purpose of writing. Colophons and catch phrases helped the reader organize and identify various tablets, and keep related tablets together. Positionally, colophons on ancient tablets are comparable to a signature line in modern times. Bibliographically, however, they more closely resemble the imprint page in a modern book.
  Examples of colophons in ancient literature may be found in the compilation The Ancient Near East: Supplementary Texts and Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (2nd ed., 1969). Colophons are also found in the Pentateuch, where an understanding of this ancient literary convention illuminates passages that are otherwise unclear or incoherent. Examples are Numbers 3:1, where a later (and incorrect) chapter division makes this verse a heading for the following chapter instead of interpreting it properly as a colophon or summary for the preceding two chapters, and Genesis 37:2a, a colophon that concludes the histories (toledot) of Jacob.
  An extensive study of the eleven colophons found in the book of Genesis was done by Percy John Wiseman. Wiseman's study of the Genesis colophons, sometimes described as the Wiseman hypothesis, has a detailed examination of the catch phrases mentioned above that were used in literature of the second millennium B.C. and earlier in tying together the various accounts in a series of tablets.
caption: Clay tablet: dictionary with colophon indicating storage emplacement in a library. From Warka, ancient Uruk, mid 1st century BC. On display at the Louvre.
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