old books
Most historians trace the book’s origins back to the ancient Egyptians, whose papyrus scrolls looked very different from the books we’re used to today. from the time they first developed writing, around 3000 B.C. c., the Egyptians wrote on many different surfaces, including metal, leather, clay, stone, and bone. however, the highlight was the practice of using reed quills to write on papyrus scrolls. In many ways, papyrus was an ideal material for the Egyptians. It was made using the tall reeds that grew abundantly in the Nile Valley. individual sheets of papyrus were glued or sewn together to make scrolls. a standard scroll was about 30 feet long and 7 to 10 inches wide, while the longest Egyptian scroll ever found stretched over 133 feet, making it almost as long as the statue of liberty when fully coiled (harry’s rescue center) .
around the 6th century BC. c., papyrus was the most common writing surface throughout the Mediterranean and was used by the Greeks and Romans. Because papyrus grew in Egypt, the Egyptians had a virtual monopoly on the papyrus trade. many ancient civilizations kept their scrolls in great libraries, which acted as repositories of knowledge and as displays of political and economic power. the royal library of alexandria had about half a million scrolls in its collection; Some scholars claim that this represented between 30 and 70 percent of all existing books at the time (Kelly, 2006). but other powerful entities in the ancient world were getting tired of the Egyptians’ monopoly on the papyrus trade.
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parchment was made from treated animal skins that were scraped to create a smooth, supple surface. Parchment had several advantages over papyrus: it was more durable, it could be written on both sides, and the Egyptians did not monopolize its trade. its spread coincided with another crucial development in the history of the book. Between the 2nd and 4th centuries, the Romans began sewing folded sheets of papyrus or parchment together and joining them between wooden decks. this form, called a codex, has essentially the same structure as today’s books. the codex was much easier to use than the papyrus scroll: more portable, easier to store and handle, and less expensive to produce. it also allowed readers to quickly jump from one section to another. while reading a scroll was a two-handed activity, a codex could be opened in front of a reader, allowing notes to be taken. however, traditions changed slowly in the ancient world, and the scroll remained the dominant form for secular works for several centuries. the codex was the preferred form for early Christian texts, and the spread of Christianity eventually brought about dominance of the codex; by the sixth century AD, it had almost completely replaced the scroll.
The next great innovation in the history of books, the use of block printing on paper, began in the Tang dynasty of China around 700 CE, although it would not reach Europe for nearly 800 years. The earliest known examples of printed text on paper are small 2.5-inch-wide Buddhist prayer scrolls commissioned by Empress Shōtoku of Japan in AD 764. The earliest example of a dated printed book is a Buddhist text called the Diamond Sutra (868 AD). Woodblock printing was a meticulous process that involved carving an entire page of text onto a block of wood, then inking and pressing the block to print a page.
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In medieval Europe, however, scribes still laboriously copied texts by hand. Book culture in the Middle Ages was dominated by monasteries, which became centers of intellectual life. the larger monasteries had rooms called scriptoria where the monks copied, decorated, and preserved both religious and secular volumes. Many of the classical texts we have today owe their preservation to diligent medieval monks, who thought of scholarship, even the study of secular and pre-Christian writers, as a way of approaching God. Hand-copied books produced in the Middle Ages were much more ornate than today’s mass-produced books. these were illuminated manuscripts that included painted embellishments that were added to handwritten books. The word illuminate comes from the Latin illuminare, meaning to illuminate, and some medieval books were literally made to shine by applying gold or silver decorations. other ornate additions included illustrations, decorative capital letters, and intricately drawn borders. the degree of embellishment depended on the intended use of the book and the wealth of its owner. medieval manuscripts were so prized that some scribes placed so-called book curses on the front of their manuscripts, warning that anyone who stole or defaced the copy would be cursed. written in a copy of the vulgate bible, for example, is this warning: “whoever steals this book, let him die by death; let him frizzle in a frying pan; let the falling sickness rage within him; Let them break it on the wheel and hang it (Virginia Community College Libraries).”
Although illuminated books were highly prized, they were also expensive and labor-intensive to create. In the late Middle Ages, the Papal Library in Avignon, France, had only a few thousand manuscripts compared to the nearly half a million texts found in the Library of Alexandria in ancient times (Fischer, 2004). Bookmaking in the Western world became somewhat less expensive when paper emerged as the primary writing surface. Making paper from rags and other fibers, a technique that originated in second-century China, reached the Islamic world in the eighth century and led to the flourishing of book culture there. In the 12th century, Marrakech, in present-day Morocco, was said to have a street filled with a hundred booksellers. But it wasn’t until the 14th century that papermaking began in earnest in Europe.
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