Abstract
Among fragments there is a group whose categorization and treatment present specific problems, because they are a case of two artefacts overlapping: texts and vehicles of transmission. However, textual transmission by manuscript has some peculiarities: while the printing process made it possible to duplicate a text and create innumerable identical copies, in manuscript cultures an identical copy of a text – given the existence of varying material forms of the text, meaning varying manuscripts – is only a theoretical possibility, due to the fact that transcription errors alone made it almost impossible to create identical texts. The text and the material were juxtaposed in a novel way in each copy of a manuscript as it was created. This means there is a wider range of possible circumstances surrounding the creation of fragmentary texts than is the case in serial and mechanized production.