HISTORIC CONNECTIONS

Clay

 One of the first writing materials known to man was clay...a simple ball of soft, moist mud drawn from the banks of the river, that had been deposited there from the many years of seasonal floods. It was readily available, inexpensive and if fired in a kiln (or accidentally burnt in a fire/conflagration) could last forever, making it one of the most durable writing materials known to man, yet we no longer use it. Paper that we write on today can only last a short time before it begins to deteriorate. The people of ancient Mesopotamia used clay prolifically while the Egyptians used it sparingly in the early predynastic period.

Clay that had not been fired could be reused by simple re wetting the surface and writing again, whereas unfired clay would crumble eventually when left exposed to the elements. The image is of our replica of an Assyrian Wedding Contract.

Seal Impressions

Seals have been used throughout time as a form of security or a form of identification.

Many seals bore an image or one of many varied symbols to represent its owner, but over time some seals

also contained text that helped specifically identify its owner.

This seal is of Ishtar-Ivanna who brings an astronomer before Ea to warn of a coming great flood.

 Papyrus

Papyrus is a writing medium made from the pith of the papyrus plant, that was once found in the Nile Delta of Ancient Egypt. The plant was thought extinct but has been successfully revived. It was abundant in Ancient Egypt, growing commonly to around two to three metres tall but in exceptional circumstances up to five metres. It is triangular in section and thrives in hot, wet conditions. It was used as far back as 3000BC, Egypt for many years holding a monopoly on its sale, exporting it all over the Mediterranean. Our word "Paper" comes from the word papyrus which originally meant "that which belongs to the house". The original word Papyrus comes from the Egyptian word "pa-en-per-aa" which means "that which belongs to the king." In ancient tomes different grades of papyrus was made depending on its intended use.
So how is it turned into a writing surface?
Firstly the outer green pith is carefully removed exposing the creamy moist inner pith, which is then in turn sliced into fine strips. These strips are laid out parallel to each other, slightly overlapping. A second layer is then laid at right angles to the first and then the whole is pressed either by hammering or in a press. After it has dried sufficiently it is then polished with a smooth stone. The sheets can be joined to form a scroll by aligning the sheets horizontal strips along the long axis of the scroll and either gluing or sowing the sections together. In the mid first century AD the codex replaced the scroll, by folding sheets and forming them together much like a book is formed today. Scrolls were usually only written on one side, while the codex was written on both sides. Exceptions to this did take place, and in some cases the text was erased and the scroll reused. The image here is our reproduction of an original papyrus signed by Cleopatra herself.

Check out the University of Michigan's online interactive display of papyrus making HERE.

Check out our great deals on Papyrus paintings on our Interactive Papyrus page.

Parchment

Parchment is a writing medium made from either calf, sheep or goatskins. It is not tanned like leather but instead goes through a different process to make it into the fine off white surface that was so prized by scribes for thousands of years.
So how is a piece of animal hide made into a fine writing surface?
Firstly the parchment maker known through medieval times as the percamenarius, would select the best quality hides, preferably without any blemishes or holes. The hide would then be washed to clean it in preparation for the next step. It would then be soaked in a bath of lime for 3 - 10 days to soften the hide. It would then be rinsed and soaked again in lime for a short period after which it would be stretched out on a rack and scraped with a special curved knife to remove the hair and the inner skin substance and then left to dry slowly until after more scraping and stretching he would be left with a thin translucent off white surface. Some parchment makers would rub fine talc in to the surface to make it more uniform. In some cases holes would appear during the process and yet manuscripts have been found in which the scribes simply wrote around them.

 Legal documents are still written on parchment today, as parchment lasts much longer than paper. This is a common plea legal document from the mid 19th century.

Parchment should not be confused with leather. Leather existed as a writing material since ancient times, a leather scroll dated to 1468BC telling of Tutmosis III and his exploits at Megiddo. Many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are actually leather not parchment, as was seen when the Bedouin that found the first scrolls thought them of so little value that he took them to a shoe maker in Bethlehem called Kando anticipating that they could be made into sandal straps. Luckily though, Kando recognized the scrolls for what they were and advised him otherwise!

The image is of our original 15th century Latin manuscript written on parchment, that was found inside the covers of a later book

 QUESTION: What is a "Palimpset"?

Vellum

Vellum has similar characteristics to parchment and to the untrained eye can look identical. However it is made from calf skin  rather than sheep or goat skin and can produce a much finer quality product.. The word Vellum has the same roots as the word Veal meaning calf.

The image here is of an early Book of Hours page written on Vellum. The vellum is so fine it almost resembles tissue paper. If you were to hold it up to the light you can see the traces of blood vessels in the fine tissue.

Paper

Paper was a Chinese invention in the second century AD but for over a thousand years passed before it eventually found it way to the west and on in to Europe. Paper made from hemp was found in a Western Han tomb in the form of ancient maps.

In the 13th century paper mills sprang up in Spain, France and Germany.

 Paper made during medieval times was made from shredded rags that had been processed manually into a pulp and then gathered on a fine mesh frame, turned out onto interleaving felt layers then allowed to dry.

During this period manufacturers found that the wire mash frame sometimes showed on thinner paper. They then made insignias from the same wire and attached it to the frame so that during manufacture this wire insignia would appear on the paper when held up to the light, and so theWatermark was invented, being used to delineate individual paper manufacturers products.

The image is of our Arabic Linguistic and Rhetoric page written on hand laid paper. The paper was hand laid on a wire screen which had the makers insignia made into it so that when you hold the paper up to the light you can see the "Watermark" in the form of a crescent.

Copper

In rare instances text has been found written on copper sheets. The most famous is the "Copper Scroll" found in Cave 3 among the Dead Sea Caves. It tells of a list of precious items of Gold, silver and incense that was buried throughout Judea of which none has ever been found. The image is of a reproduction of one of the two copper scroll segments as found at Qumran. 

Pottery

Text written on pottery was known in ancient times as an Ostracon. These pottery pieces were essentially the scrap note pages of antiquity that were found in abundance as pottery once broken was discarded outside the house and reused to write brief notes and letters. They were used in Deir el Medina in Egypt by the tomb builders of the Valley of the Kings, by Greek citizens who voted to have an unruly citizen "Ostracised" from the community (hence the name Ostracon and by Jewish Zealots on the mountaintop of Masada as they voted to see who would slay heir own people rather than submit to the Romans who were about to break through the fortified walls.

The image here is of an ostracon found in a ruined house in 1st century Jerusalem know as the House of Ahiel because of his name written here.

Gold

Writing has been found written on thin sheets of gold. One famous example is the Pyrgi Tablets written in both Etruscan and Phoenician.

Lead

During the Roman period lead was used in quite a different matter. Lead curse tablets of "Prayers for Justice" to put it mildly have been found in springs and rivers across Roman Britain and elsewhere. Many texts we have from the Roman period are the texts of the upper society however this lead tablets give us a window into the lower class of provincials, non-citizens, women and slaves. The object of this was that when one had something stolen from him/her they would write a phrase in Latin (Vulgar Latin) that meant to invoke one or more of the goods to seek the return of goods stolen and to indict injury on the perpetrator. The texts could be written in a latin that scholars can read today or at worst some were a series of crosses and sevens, most likely from an illiterate individual. 

This lead curse tablet comes from an archaeologist collection from the river Tees at Piercebridge near where Time Team series 17 filmed an episode. 

The Latin of the curse tablets, called Vulgar latin or the Latin of the common people was the language that would later develop into the Romance languages of Europe. 

Wood

Wood was a common writing material in Roman times but most examples have perished, except for a famous collection at the Roman frontier fort of vindolana in Northern England. Many examples of letters written to family and friend were found buried in the wet soils of the fort. The wet conditions excluded the oxygen from the soil allowing these potent examples of written passion from almost 2000 years ago.

SILK

The Chinese used silk to make a writing surface that could be used for scrolls. They were used as far back as 200BC. Large text scrolls were designed to be displayed on a wall for periods of time while narrow vertical text scrolls were meant for recording only.

The unrolled scroll is an official text dated to 1724. Note the red seal impressions stamped in ink.

The rolled scroll is a copy of the famous Qingming Shang He Tu scroll dated to 1085. It is a  5.25 meter scroll depicting life during a festival in Bianjing in China and is considered to be China's Mona Lisa. Click HERE for a video description of the scroll. 

Rice Paper

Bone

Bone was not an uncommon writing surface, yet it was used only for special circumstances. 

This is a Chinese oracle bone written in the old seal script. Oracle bones were used in ancient China for divination or fortune telling.

They were usually written on Ox scapula (such as this one) or on Turtle shells.

The image below is of a Mayan Monkey Bone (Femur) with Mayan Glyphs carved into its surface.

Palm Leaf 

Palm leaf manuscripts were made from dried pal leaves across much of India and South East Asia. They were dried then text was written using a sharp pointed instrument and carbon soot was then rubbed over the text to make it stand out. The palm leaves were all cut to the same size and bound together between wooden covers with a string through the uses to keep them together. They date back as far as the 5th century BC.

Slate

From the Victorian through the Edwardian period school pupils write their exercises on framed sheets of slate allowing the text to be erased and rotten over again and again.

One a stident completed his/her task he/she would erase the chalk often with his sleeve turn the slate over and write a new set of exercises, hence the term "Turning over a new slate......"

The Scroll

The Wax Tablet

Wax tablets were a portable and reusable writing surface used from as early as 1400BC right through to the medieval period to as late as the 15th century.

They were made of wood, ivory or even bone or horn, they had a recess inside which was filled with a thin layer of wax. To write on them you would use a pointed stylus which also had a broad flattened end that could also be used to erase the text. One could also erase the text by heating the wax.The oldest in existence was found on a ship wreck off the coast of Turkey and is dated to the 14th century BC. It was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and was most likely a shipping record as it was found amongst the amphorae on the ship. 

The Greeks used wax tablets calling them "Deltos" many examples being portrayed on Greek vases.

A wax tablet was found in Ugarit tatted to c1300BC and was called a "Deltu" which translated means a door.

An Assyrian relief dated to c640BC shows a scribe holding an opened wax tablet and an ivory tablet was found in Sargon's Palace in Nimrud.

The Romans called them "Diptych" or if a multipage unit a "Polytriptych". Examples have been found in excavations at the fort at Vindolanda

They were useful for writing speeches, for drafting mathematical exercises, for correspondence and teaching and even for official records.

The photo shows various examples from a large Greek "deltos" that is larger than an A4 page, to a Red was Roman "diptych" (opened) a Multi page "Polytriptych" and a small medieval tablet made of horn with a leather case and wooden stylus.

Note: We have Wax Tablet replicas for sale on our manuscripts page.

The Codex or what we are familiar with today as our present day book format, developed most likely from the Wax Tablet. The name "Codex" comes from the latin word caudex meaning block of wood. When scribes started to change from the scroll format , in which they were writing on one side of papyrus and rolling it, they changed the format to make both better use of the writing surface and to make access to the text more practical. The scroll was made of many sheets glued end to end with text written on one side only. To access a text in the middle, one had to unroll the scroll with one hand and roll it up with the other until he found the section he needed.

The Codex however was formed from sheets of papyrus (and later parchment) that were folded to form a gathering that looked like the pages we have today in our book form. The text would then be written on both sides and to find a section of text one simply had to flip through the pages. Multiple gatherings or "quires" could be aded to the codex, allowing a much larger work to be combined in a single codex than could ever be held in a single scroll.The codex would then be bound in covers of leather.

Below are some examples of some key codices.  

NOTE: Reproductions of a Nag Hammadi Codex are available for sale on our manuscripts page. Also available is reproduction, an interpretation of how a 1/2nd century Gospel codex may have looked. 

Cave Art

Is cave art writing? Scholars say 30,000 years ago people painted images and signs on the walls of caves across France. Paintings, etchings, and signs of various forms have been found. What do they say? "I was here!"," This is me and my herd...." they all are trying to tell a story. The first writings of both Sumeria and Egypt were picture words, they were to eve love into sounds and letters eventually but all were early stages of writing....

So, is Cave art writing or maybe a precursor to writing?These people were hunter gatherers, they didn't live in cities, and they didn't yet require a need for accounting. That would come later as urbanisation started to appear, as people developed a need to account for their livestock, to trade goods.......

Tallies

According to the historical record, King Darius of Persia left a Greek force guarding his rear when he was attacking the Scythians, but after leaving a thong with 60 knots in it, he asked them to undo one knot everyday and if he had not returned before all the knots had been undone, they should sail home. Tallies have been used across the ancient world. The Chinese used tallies until recently and did the British Exchequer until 1834. The Incas who wrote no script used a form of tally that was far more complex and verged on a writing system.

Early Pictographic Writing

An Early Sumerian Pictographic tablet dated to c3100BC. A tablet made from limestone with words in pictographic format separated into boxes. The hand symbol signifies the owner while the 3 boxes alongside have numbered proper names for materials. The bottom section is the name of the owner. This tablet is a key example of the development of early Sumerian text during the Proto- Urban period when people were beginning to live in towns and small cities. These pictographic symbols would progressively evolve into the cuneiform characters in later texts.

So why did simple pictographic characters evolve?

As society developed, with urbanisation, increasing trade and documentation, the drawing of this type of image was quite cumbersome, so scribes learnt to simplify the signs to speed the process of writing.

THINK ON THIS: Where do we see pictographic writing today? 

An Assyrian Dictionary from Nineveh.

The words are arranged in three sets of double columns. The left hand column of each set contains a rare Assyrian or foreign loan word for furnishings. For example, the word "door" appears in the centre. The right hand column of each set contains the equivalent Assyrian word in common use. The left hand column ends with the colophon of the royal library of Nineveh. The original, found in the library of Nineveh, dates from the 7th century BC.

Questions: What was the purpose of Colophons? Are colophons used today in any form? Colophons are found throughout the Old Testament in our Bibles. Can you find any? Who developed the Royal Library of Nineveh? How big was it?

FOR SALE NOW ON OUR MESOPOTAMIAN PAGE.

Cuneiform URIII Period 

2200-2000BC

Text Akkadian - Language Sumerian

This is a small fragmented text from northern Israel. It is an inventory or commercial transaction that describes a series of fields alongside canals:

1’            …..

2’            …  next to the Kasi canal

3             … next to the Wedutum canal

4             … next to the Wedutum canal

5             …

Breaks

Ii 1’        …

2.            …

3.            2  (ESHE-area units) … 20 …

4.            2 (ESHE-area units) … 20 …

5.            (indented)  …

6.            1 (BUR-area unit) 2 (EBEL-area units) …

7.            (indented)            (Name)

8.            2 (ESHE-area units) … 20 …

               breaks

…………………………………………………………….

BUR was a measure of large estates  (BUR = approx 64,800m²)

One ESHE/EBEL is  6 IKU  or 1/3 of a BUR: ( more or less 21,800 sq meters or about 18 hectares = 5 acres).

QUESTION: This tablet describes some field sizes next to a canal. Do you think this is a record of land ownership or maybe a transaction? When an excavation takes place and cuneiform tablets are found, some can be found intact while many are found fragmented. How were clay tablets stored in ancient times? Privately vs Palace libraries? What role did Akkadian play as a text in the ancient Near East? How long was it used for? Some clay tablets would be kiln fired while others were merely air dried? Why do you think this was so? Some air dried tablets today are excavated and are as hard as pottery. How could this occur?

FOR SALE NOW ON OUR MESOPOTAMIAN PAGE.

The Rosetta Stone

Discovered in 1799 by Napoleons soldiers while building a fort at Rashid (Ancient Rosetta) the Rosetta stone was to become the key to unlocking the Hieroglyphic text of Ancient Egypt. Prior to this the history of ancient Egypt was essentially unknown locked up in the myriad of texts written on temples, tombs and scrolls across the nation of Egypt.

The Rosetta stone was a large basalt stela written by Egyptian priests in 196BC to honour the then Pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes for his work.

The stone has imprinted on it 3 scripts in two languages. The scripts were Egyptian Hieroglyphs (top), Demotic (Centre) and Greek (bottom). The Greek was well known by scholars as was Coptic, which has some connections with the ancient Demotic. They key to translation was the royal names written in cartouches in the hieroglyphic text that matched their names written in the parallel text of the Greek. Those cartouche names were also available in one form or another on other monuments from ancient Egypt as well. Shared characters in these names allowed the first stages of translation to start and by 1922 Frenchman Jen Francois Champollion was able to announce he had cracked the code. It was a number of years however before scholars were able to confidently travel Egypt to translate the words on the walls.

FOR SALE NOW ON OUR EGYPTIAN PAGE.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus

Papyrus was used in Egypt for thousands of years and was essentially the paper of today. Most works from ancient Egypt written on papyrus were formed into scrolls depending on the length of the work. 

The Edwin Smith Papyrus is a famous ancient medical text from Egypt named after Edwin Smith who purchased the manuscript in Egypt in 1862.

As you can see the text has both red and black inks and is written using the Hieratic text a cursive form of the Hieroglyphs. The red ink sections are explanatory glosses or comments. The original scroll was 4.68m long.  

Linear B

Linear B is the oldest Greek dialect in the Mycenaean language which was used from 1500 - 1200BC in Crete and some of the most southern part of the Greek mainland.

It comprised mainly of syllabic characters and some logograms and used a base 10 numbering system, the majority of the inscriptions being an accounting collection.

The first texts were found in the early 1900s by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, however it wasn't until the 1950s that young Michael Ventris deciphered the text. 

Linear B differs from Linear A in that Linear A was more a pictographic script that was used under the Minoans. 

FOR SALE NOW ON OUR GREEK PAGE.

Seals of the Indus Valley

A text that is still being explored, the glyphic script of the seals of the Indus Valley of North Western India is puzzling scholars even today, though some think they have it deciphered. Seals like this were used for trading all over the then known world and they contained a series of glyphs used between 3500 and 1900BC. Over 400 distinct signs have been found in use but all are short inscriptions that make it difficult to classify.

An ancient manuscript page from Timbuktu...

This is an Arabic text hand laid paper page, the text is a treatise on marriage, related laws and inheritance.

The people of Timbuktu cherished their manuscripts so when tales of theft seeped through the people they hid their manuscripts, some buried theirs in steel trunks and others under cupboards, but the ravages of time and the elements nearly destroyed most of them. Now their is a drive to gather and preserve their written heritage, with research and restoration.

This manuscript has water damage, but note these characteristics: The text is in black and red ink (rubrication), rhetorical comments are written in the margins and someone has gone to the trouble to repair the tear with blue thread.

Questions: Where is Timbuktu and why are its manuscripts important for their culture? Does blue thread have any special meanings? Why comments in the margins, after all it is just a text about marriage? 

Arabic manuscript with a scribe's Qalamadam - Pen holder/inkwell.