Epigraphy (from the Greek: ἐπιγραφή epi-graphē, literally "on-writing", "inscription") is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be deduced concerning the writing and the writers. Specifically excluded from epigraphy is the historical significance of an epigraph as a document or the artistic value of a literary composition.

A person utilizing the methods of epigraphy is called an epigrapher or epigraphist. For example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating and dating the trilingual inscription and finding any relevant circumstances. It is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often epigraphy and history are competences practiced by the same person.

An epigraph is any sort of text, from a single grapheme (such as marks on a pot that abbreviate the name of the merchant who shipped commodities in the pot) to a lengthy document (such as a treaty, a work of literature, or a hagiographic prescription). Epigraphy overlaps other competences such as numismatics or palaeography. Most inscriptions are short compared to books. The media and the forms of the graphemes can be any whatever: engravings in stone or metal, scratches on rock, impressions in wax, embossing on cast metal, cameo or intaglio on precious stones, painting on ceramic or in fresco. Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, such as the baking of a clay tablet in a conflagration. Modern inscriptions might be chalk graffiti on a sidewalk, skywriting, a tracing with the finger in the condensed moisture from a breath on glass, or in criminology less propitious media. Traces of such temporary epigraphs preserved by chance are often of great interest.