Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/324

* BOOK. 28(i BOOK. brought to light, from the ruins of the Temple of Nippur, tablets believed to have been produced about B.C. tiOOO. The text inscribed on these is, with few exceptions, devoted to the hj-mns and invocations used in the temple services. The larger of these Chaldean tablets are flat, and measure 9 inches by SV:i inches; the smaller are slightly convex, and in some cases are not more than 1 inch long, bearing but one or two lines of cuneiform characters. These characters are im- pressed on the soft clay by a little iron rod (the equivalent of the Koman stylus), not pointed, but triangular, at the end. The impression bears, therefore, the shape of a wedge. In the literature of Egypt, the earliest examples (apart from certain inscriptions on the tombs) are cop- ies of wliat was known as the Book of the Dead. The text of this varied with the different copies, as these were prepared for placing in the tombs or in the cases with the mummies, and while all contained invocations to the deities, together with prayers and psalms, dilTered in including special records referring to the life of the de- ceased and to his personal expectations for the world to come. The Chinese speak of their own literature as having originated many thousand years back : but its'earliest known work of which any copies have been preserved dates from B.C. 1150, or some 200 years earlier than the gener- ally accepted date of the Homeric poems. The book in question bears the title Y-ling, the Book of the Metamorjihoses or Developments. The ma- terial next in importance to the baked clay, and probably also next in point of antiquity, was the skin of "goats. In the earlier form in which this was utilized by the Hebrews, Greeks, and others, the skin was "dressed only on one side, and did not present any thoroughly finished surface. These dressed skins were called by the Greeks diphthtrui. and writings upon them came to be known by the same name. Ctesias speaks of the diphlhn'iii hasilikni, royal hooks (or writings or documents i of the Persians, and Herodotus says that such skins were used in the earlier ages even in Kgyjit. It was, however, not until the production "of parchment (q.v.) {memhrana or pergamena), that the value of skins for literary purposes began to be properly understood; and even parchment made its way but slowly among writers in competition with the longestablislied papyrus, which it was, however, destined to out- last" for many centuries. The name parchment {pcrfi'imeiKi)' i!i derived from the city of Perga- nuini, where, a<-cording to the tradition, it was first iTrepared under the direction of King Eu- menes II. about B.C. 100. It is probable that parchment had actually been produced considerably before this date; but great impetus was undoui)tedly given to its use and its manufacture was improved, owing to the embargo placed by the Eg>'ptian King. Ptolemy Philadelphus. on the exportation from Egypt (if papyrus. The papyrus is a species of reed which in ancient times abounded on the banks of the Nile. According to Wilkinson, the plant has now entirely disappeared from Eg>pt, recalling the prophecy of Isaiah (xix. 7) : "The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks. . . . shall wither, be driven away, and >e no more." The material used from tlie papyrus-plant was the pith of the stem, which was rolled out into a tissue. Pliny speaks of the layers of the pith being soaked in water of the Nile and woven into a sheet {plagula or net). An evidence of the early use. in various countries, of vegetable tissue for writing is found in the etymology of Greek and Latin names for books (/si/SXos, lihcr, codex), all of which refer originally to parts of trees or reeds. The writing on "the sheet of papyrus was done with a split reed; for ink, different colored pigments were utilized. The oldest Egyptian papyrus kno i to have been preserved has Iieen assigned to a date about B.C. 2000, or 4000 years later than the baked tiles of Chaldca. The jiapyrus book, whether Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, was arranged very nuicli like a modern mounted map. The length of the male- rial, written on one side only, was woimd upon a wooden roller. Such rolls were fouiul often 20, 30, or even 40 yards long. Herodotus tells us of a copy of the Odyssey written on one such roll. With the increasing scarcity of papyrus, the im- proved parchment came into general use, sujier- seding papyrus by the beginning of the Seventh Century. Hut frcun the Fourth Century B.C. to the close of the Sixth Century A.D., by far the larger proportion of the literature of I'he world was recorded on sheets of papyrus. The i)erisha- bility of the papyrus is responsible for the loss of a very large proportion of this literature of antiquity. Bearing in mind the fragile charac- ter of the material itself and its liability to de- struction through damp, dry-rot, mice, "and in- sects, and recalling also that the mere handling by the most careful readers of a papyrus roll destroyed in a very brief period the outside sheets (that is to say. the beginning and the end of the manuscript), one is surprised, not that the literature of Greece and Rome has come to lis in such fragmentary condition, but that so many important works have been preserved. When there came to be. as in Rome, in the First and Second centuries a.d., a continued and increasing demand for copies of a work, the booksellers organized methods for speedier mul- tiplication of copies than had lieen possible wlien each copy was produced by a single scribe. By using readers «ho dictated at one time to a group of from a dozen to fifty scril>es. they secured a very considerable speed in the multiplication of copies. Nearly all of these scribes were slaves, but they were well-educated slaves. Accuracy was, however, sacrificed to speed; there was often no proper collation, and many of the deficiencies in the texts of classical works are to be charged to the carelessness of these copyists. The .scribes who prepared the nianuscrii)ts were known as librarii. This name came afterwards to be ap- plied to the booksellers through whom the mani- folded copies were sold. The smaller dealers had themselves given the manual labor for the pro- duction of their wares; the larger lihiarii hired for the purpose the work of the slaves. With the institution of the first Christian monasteries, with their scriptorin or writing- rooms, the business of book-making takes on a new phase. The material is jiarchment. The stylus is developed into a reed ])en. The scribes are no longer slaves working un<ler hire, or book- sellers preparing copies for sale, but monks man- ifolding sacred writings for the glory of God. We have thus at once a higher standard of work, both f(U- accuracy and for beauty. The classic texts that exist today have come down to us in these parchment copies prepared by the monastic copyists. The texts from which the first of these