Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

ANCIENT WRITING MATERIALS.

Stylus and Tablets.—The first writing was done on rocks with sharp-pointed instruments of iron or bronze, to record great events. Next came tracings on bricks of soft clay, afterward sun-dried or baked; and then writing with a metal or ivory stylus on sheets of lead or layers of wax, from which erasures could be made, if needful, with the flattened end of the instrument.

Pliny speaks of leaden sheets, thus inscribed, rolled up in a cylindrical form when not in use. But under provocation the metallic stylus could be employed as a dagger; and when a Roman schoolmaster was killed by his pupils with their styles and heavy table-books, the dangerous instrument was banished, and superseded by a similar one of horn. The early shepherds, we are told, imitated this mode of writing, making thorns or awls do duty as styles, and scratching their songs on leather straps which they wound round their crooks.

Wooden tablets, glazed to receive coloring matter, were used by the Jews and early Egyptians, and the former wrote also with a diamond-tipped stylus on stone or metallic tables. The Greeks and Romans sometimes wired their tablets of citron-wood, beech, or fir, together at the back, so as to allow them to open like a modern book.

Calamus, or Reed.—A great advance was made when the stylus gave way to camel’s hair brushes or reeds (calami) sharpened and split like our pens, and the tablets were replaced with papyrus and parchment. The reeds in common use came from Egypt, but persons of fortune often wrote with a silver calamus. The ink employed was thicker and more lasting than ours; sometimes prepared from the black fluid of the cuttle-fish, but generally from lampblack and glue, or from soot, rosin, and pitch.—Chalk pencils were at one time manufactured by the Egyptians and Greeks.

With the reed and ink, bark came into use as a cheap writing material; hence the Latin word for bark, liber, meant also book. Leaves, too, were employed for this purpose, particularly those of the palm—whence, perhaps, the leaf of a book was so called. But for manuscripts designed for permanent preservation, papyrus had the decided preference.

Egyptian Papyrus.

Papyrus, or the paper-plant, the bulrush of Scripture, grew in the marshes and pools of Egypt. Its branchless stem rose from five to ten feet above the water, and was surmounted by a cluster of long, spike-shaped, drooping leaves. This plant was woven into sandals, mats, clothing, and even boats; was eaten, raw and boiled; was manufactured into furniture; and was burned for fuel and light; when prepared for writing purposes, it was invaluable. The part under the water was selected, the outer bark removed, and the delicate white layers found beneath were pressed together into sheets and dried. These were written on with red and black ink, and some of them were elaborately ornamented with many-colored figures.

The finest papyrus was reserved for the priests, and never exported till they had used it. But the Romans, having invented a process for removing what was first written on it, imported it in large quantities; they also attempted its cultivation in the marshes of the Tiber, but without success. The Greeks did not use it extensively until the era of the Ptolemies.

Parchment was prepared from the skins of sheep and goats by polishing them with pumice-stone and then rubbing in fragrant oil. Its name, in Latin pergamena, would seem to indicate Pergamus in western Asia as the place of its origin; but centuries before that little kingdom became celebrated for its library of parchment volumes, this material, or something very like it, was known. Herodotus mentions its use in his time; and the Jews, as a pastoral people familiar with the art of dressing skins, wrote their first books on a kind of leather.

Reading a Volumen, or Roll.

But if parchment was not invented at Pergamus, Eu’menes, king of that country, was certainly the first to make extensive use of it (175 B.C.). He had founded a splendid library, which he determined should eclipse that of Alexandria. In the reign of Ptolemy Epiph’anes, king of Egypt, it was sought to prevent the transcription of books for the rival library by prohibiting the exportation of papyrus. This obliged Eumenes to resort to parchment as a substitute. From Pergamus it spread to Europe, finally superseding all other materials, and continuing in demand until the art of making paper cheaply from rags was invented toward the close of the Middle Ages.

Ancient manuscripts were put up in the form of rolls (volu’mina—whence volumes), made of sheets fastened together in a continuous strip, sometimes forty or fifty yards in length. This was wound round wooden cylinders, the ends of which were often set with jewels, or ornamented with knobs of ivory, silver, or gold. Titles were either suspended from these books like tags, or glued upon them as labels. An outside cover of parchment protected the scrolls, which, enclosed in cylindrical cases and placed horizontally on shelves ranged about a room, constituted an ancient library.

The Chinese, after writing for centuries, in common with their neighbors of India, on bark and dried palm-leaves, are believed to have discovered a process of preparing a pulp from cotton or bamboo, and to have manufactured it into paper as early as the commencement of our era. Perhaps, as observation of the silkworm spinning her cocoons led them to devise the art of weaving silk, they in like manner borrowed his cunning from the paper-making wasp, and thus early perfected an invention which has been of incalculable service to literature.