An ancient manuscript or document (like a papyrus) written on only one side, as opposed to having writing on both sides.
From Greek 'ano-' (up, back) + 'opisthen' (from behind) + 'graphein' (to write), literally meaning 'not written on the back.' The term describes medieval and ancient book practices.
An anopisthograph is the opposite of a palimpsest—while palimpsests reused paper by scraping off old text, anopisthographs were simply one-sided! This tells us ancient people often had plenty of papyrus to waste, which is actually rare and valuable to archaeologists.
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