Concentrating on inscriptions on late antique reliquaries from the eastern Mediterranean and on early medieval reliquaries from Western Europe, this panel explores how epigraphic texts participated in the presentation of the relics in their cult sites and how they contributed to explaining the relics’ or the reliquaries’ significance to the intended audience. The proposed papers approach the relations between textual contents, material characteristics of writing, supports and contexts via questions of visibility, legibility, and function of inscriptions.