The Rarest Signature

Join me on my quest to find the rarest autographs in existence...

Narrated, Edited, & Researched by Trey the Explainer
Music Score by Ryan Probert
Special Thanks to Professor Peter van Minnen and Cleopatra (aka my mom)

Chapters:
0:00:00 Introduction
0:04:55 Modern to Medieval Celebrities
0:10:48 Hitting Autograph Bedrock
0:13:41 Signature Literacy
0:19:42 Kings and Emperors
0:25:11 Make it happen!
0:32:33 Crazy Horse

Additional Photos courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons:
Craig Gentry Autograph (39591936350).jpg by Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA
The Egypt Exploration Society

Citations
Clarysse, W., & Vandorpe, K. (2008) Information Technologies: Writing, Book Production, And The Role of Literacy. [Chapter 28 within The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World]. Oxford University Press.
Fletcher, R. A. (1989). The Quest for el Cid. Oxford University Press.
Hunt, A. S., Johnson, J. de M., & Roberts, C. H. (1911). Catalogue of the Greek Papyri in the John Rylands Library (Vol. II). University Press.
Knipfing, J. R. (1923). The libelli of the Decian persecution. Harvard University Press. The Harvard Theological Review, Oct., 1923, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 345- 390
Leemans, C. (1840). Description raisonnée des Monumens Égyptiens du Musée D’Antiquités des pays-bas À leide par le ... C. Leemans, directeur du musée . Hazenberg Klassik Stiftung Weimar.
Marshall III, J. M. (2004). The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota history. Viking.
Porten, B. (1996). The Elephantine Papyri In English. E.J. Brill.
Reece, S. (2017). Cleopatra Couldn’t Spell (And Neither Can We!). Ab Omni Parte Beatus: Classical Essays in Honor of James M. May (Mundelein: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2017) pp. 201-220.
Roller, D. W. (2012). Cleopatra: A biography. Oxford University Press.
Rutherford, A., & Mukherjee, S. (2018). A brief history of everyone who ever lived: The human story retold through our genes. The Experiment.
Schiff, S. (2010). Cleopatra: A life. Little, Brown and Co.
Tallet, Pierre (2017). Les Papyrus De La Mer Rouge: Le Journal De Merer (Papyrus Jarf A et B) [The Red Sea Papyri: The Diary of Merer] (PDF) (in French, English, and Arabic). Vol. 1. Translated by Clement, Colin; Lotfallah, Soheir. ISBN 9782724707069.
Tallet, P., & Lehner, M. (2022). The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri reveal the secrets of the Pyramids. Thames and Hudson.
Turner, E. G. (2015). Greek papyri: An introduction. Princeton University Press.
Tyldesley, J. (2011). Cleopatra: Last queen of Egypt. Profile.
Van Minnen, P. (2000). An Official Act of Cleopatra (With A Subscription In Her Own Hand). Peeters Publishers. Ancient Society, 2000, Vol. 30 (2000), pp. 29-34
Van Minnen, P. (2024). Email Correspondence with Trey the Explainer.

[TREYtheExplainer]

*slight correction, when I talk about “the Rijksmuseum” of the Netherlands, I’m specifically referring to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the city of Leiden. Please ignore the “Amsterdam” part, that’s a different Rijksmuseum. I got my geography a little confused but hopefully it’s not too distracting.

[AlternateHistoryHub]

Messi's signature is literally messy. Simulation writers went wild on that one

[someone_stole_my_handle]

1:17 Incredibly funny that this video that probably took months to produce was released only a few days after President Jimmy Carter died, amazing timing on that one.
Rip Jimmy, I guess this makes his signature a bit rarer now.

[LISHAI]

31:33 - for a moment I thought he was about to say: "I got a chance to email Cleopatra"

[Livin_Fossil]

I find it funny that if you call Charles "Charlemagne the great" it would technically mean "Charles the Great the Great" as Charlemagne comes from french "Charles le magne" meaning "Charles the Great".

[comlitbeta]

13:14 "...doodle of school childrens..."
*The grown ass man trying his best to make a portrait of his wife*
☹

[CharlieHustle]

I can only assume that there are lots of undiscovered signatures in the Vatican vaults

[hucklebucklin]

The devaluing signatures reminds me of John Green who gave him signing his name for a while today. He has autographed 780k copies of his books in the last 14 years or so. His signature now devalues his books, unsigned copies of certain books are worth more. He had to stop signing the books as he has injured his signing hand for singing too much

[sequoia]

Last time Ive been this early to a Trey's video Jimmy Carter was alive and well

[ПаніПончик]

I have a stack of documents signed by Stalin.
My husband's grandpa was severely injured in WW2, but he survived and lived until the late 80s. My husband inherited a few items when he grew up.
My husband is Ukrainian, so Stalin isn't exactly loved by him, but it is still interesting to have those papers signed by the other WW2 guy with a funny mustache.

[rhov-anion]

As a writer, one thing I was warned repeatedly is to NEVER use my real signature when signing books. This is for security. You have a "personal signature" that you use for banks and government documents, and a "business signature" you use for your readers. Every time I have a book signing, I have to go back and remind myself what my "business signature" is.

[ArguablyAStableRambler]

I love it when Trey the Explainer said "Its explainin time" and explained all over the place

[CollinBuckman]

28:50 Can't believe everyone is making Star Wars jokes when "make it so" was literally the catchphrase of Jean-Luc Picard smh my head

[fiveplussixequals]

EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOURE DOING !! TREY DROPPED !!!!

[keinname]

I bet someone else already pointed it out but the text at 10:18 below in broken german lettering states that Charles just drew the diamond in the middle with the little thing on top and the rest of the monogram was written by the same person that wrote the rest of the text around it

[StefanMilo]

29:43 I literally had no idea we potentially had Cleopatra's handwriting. That's cocobananas

[quintessences]

0:15 Wikipedia is a great aggregate of sources and citations for a subject. That’s where I always start is at the citations

[kuitaranheatmorus]

TREY the Explainer in 2025, easily is the best New Years gift I could get; you're such an icon and am glad you're still making videos like these cause they're so very well informed and very awesome.

[marvelfannumber]

Surprised that the so-called 'Ashtiname of Muhammad' wasn't mentioned here. It's a document held in St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, and while the current copy dates to the 16th Century, it purports to date to the 7th Century, and include the signature of the Prophet Muhammad, in the form of a handprint.
Its authenticity has been disputed, but it's still cited in many modern legal cases in the Islamic World with regard to the rights of Christians.

[None-Trick_Pony]

On July 12th, 1973, in St. Louis, a fire broke out on the sixth floor of a building. While it didn't take long for firefighters to arrive, the easily combustible materials stored in the building and consistently low water pressure frustrated the firefighters' attempts to save the building. It took forty-two districts four and a half days in order to quench the fires. Fortunately, despite the difficulties, the fire was contained within the sixth floor. Once the smoke cleared, 16-18 million documents were permanently damaged or completely lost due to the fire or the water used to save them. The documents in question? They were the war records of veterans. 75% of all Navy personnel discharged between 1947 and 1960 and whose names are after James E. Hubbard alphabetically were lost. The army was not so lucky. 80% of all army personnel discharged from 1912 to 1960 were lost. There were no backups ever made. Among those army records were my late maternal grandfather's. The cause of the fire is unknown, but it is believed to have been a careless smoker.

Even in the modern era, it only takes a few mistakes for vast amounts of records to be lost forever. Backup everything you can—paper decays, hard drives die, and everything burns.