Part 5

The manufacture of paper has now reached a stage, it would almost seem, of unimprovable excellence. In what is known as the "India" paper there is combined, to a superlative degree, the paper-maker's science with the artist's skill. It is called "India" paper "owing to the prevailing tendency to describe as 'Indian' everything coming from the Far East," whence it was brought to England as early as 1841. This paper is not only thin and light but also tough and strong and has an opacity which makes it ideal for the printing of books (especially the Bible) where it is desirable to reduce the weight and bulk without diminishing the size of type or sacrificing beauty of typography and serviceability. It combines maximum durability and capacity with minimum dimensions and weight. Two facts will illustrate the foregoing observation: (1) There is an edition of the Bible, containing the Authorized Version complete in every particular, reduced within the dimensions of one and a-quarter, seven-eighths, and one-half an inch--or a little less than fifty-five one-hundredths of one cubic inch. It is hardly necessary to say that it can be read only by the aid of a magnifying lens. (2) And in an advertising booklet setting forth the excellencies of an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica there is given a remarkable test of the capacity of the India paper to endure severe usage. A sheet from a volume was folded in strips and tied in knots, drawn through a lady's finger ring, crumpled into a tight ball, then opened out and ironed to its original state of finish.

The tests to which the "India" paper was subjected at the Paris Exposition in 1900 also show its most remarkable capacity. In those tests a volume of 1,500 pages was suspended for several months by a single leaf as thin as tissue and, at the close of the exhibition, it was found that the leaf had not started, the paper had not stretched, and the volume closed as well as ever. A strip of this paper, three inches wide, sustained a weight of twenty-eight pounds before yielding. This indicates its extreme tensile capacity. By the use of this paper a book of a thousand pages may be brought within the limits of three-quarters of an inch in thickness--the paper being of such degree of opaqueness as to make possible a beautiful typography on both sides of the sheet and of such strength and durability as to sustain long continued use. The following is a publisher's advertisement of a teacher's Bible: "Printed on genuine India paper, which measures only five-eighths of an inch to 1,000 sheets, making a beautiful, light-weight, convenient book." The fine editions of the Bible (for use and not as a curiosity of the printer's art) and the great Encyclopedia Britannica, printed on India paper are conspicuous examples and embody both the paper maker's science and the printer's art.

XI

OTHER MATERIALS OF LITERATURE

Besides the materials already mentioned, other substances were utilized upon which to impress or embody literature or any historical data. Thus, sections of the bamboo; the leaves and bark of trees and plants as the linden, birch, and the palm; tablets of wood, ivory, gold, bronze, tin, lead, and wax; sheets of silk and linen; sun-dried and fire-burnt bricks; tablets and cylinders of clay; and slabs and stelai of stone, were each and all used in variable proportions, according to taste or necessitous conditions. Of the materials used in picture writing of the ancient Aztecs of Mexico, Prescott says: "The manuscripts were made of different materials, cotton cloth or skins nicely prepared; a composition of silk and gum; but for the most part a kind of paper from the leaves of the maguey."[33]

Some of these materials were used transiently and in small areas; others of them were widely used and for a long period of time. Mr. G. H. Putnam instances the case of wax tablets which were known to Homer as being still in use among the Romans twelve hundred years later. In Palestine and Phœnicia and, indeed, in many places if not everywhere, the earliest writing was on stone, of which the famous Rosetta and the Moabite stones and the inscriptions cut on temple walls, gates, stone cliffs, and monuments, as in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Crete, and in the western hemisphere also, are examples from the remote past. In Assyria and Babylonia clay was all but universally employed as the material upon which to write, and because it was everywhere available. Clay was the material at hand and was used for vari-sized tablets and for hollow hexagonal or octagonal cylinders.

[In this connection it will be of interest to note two important "finds" of the cuneiform writing which have recently been brought to light in Upper Egypt and in Babylon, respectively. There was discovered in 1891-92, by Professor Petrie, at Tel-el-Amarna, above the city of Cairo on the east bank of the Nile, a body of tablets--over three hundred in number--written in cuneiform or Babylonian characters. The scholars were astonished at finding this collection in Egypt, so remote from the home of the cuneiform writing. The inscriptions on them increased their surprise, for these tablets were written in Jerusalem, Tyre, Gezer, and other cities of Palestine and Syria and sent by these subject peoples to their Egyptian masters and rulers. They show, as Professor Sayce holds, that writing on tablets was, at least in the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (1,000 B. C.), the normal form of official correspondence between Egypt and her foreign provinces.[34] The greater part of these tablets were purchased for the Berlin Museum, though quite a number of them were secured for the British Museum. (Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition.)

The other important "find"--an elaborate monument of early civilization and embodying, perhaps, the most ancient of all codes--was that discovered on the acropolis of ancient Susa in Persia during the winter of 1901-02 by the French Expedition. This discovery consisted of three fragments of black diorite stone and constituted, when fitted together, a monument nearly eight feet in height. This monument embodies a bas-relief of King Hammurabi receiving the Laws from the sun-god, and an inscription of about four thousand lines (the longest inscription yet discovered) arranged in forty-four columns, engraven on the _stele_ in cuneiform characters as were the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. It is believed by the scholars that this Code was set up in the principal cities of the realm and was designed to be read and observed by the King's subjects. This Hammurabi (identified by most Assyriologists as the Amraphel of the Old Testament, Genesis 14:1) was the sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon and reigned for fifty-five years, about 2250 B. C. He was a great scholar and a pious and god-fearing King who codified existing laws and had them widely promulgated.[35]]

Wood was used in some countries as the material upon which to write or carve records and laws. The mummy-cases were both written upon and carved with Egyptian characters and the laws of Solon were inscribed on tablets of wood. The word _codex_ which has come to have different significations meant, originally, the trunk of a tree but came to be the designation for a wooden tablet coated with wax for writing purposes. Pliny is authority for the statement that the bark of trees was used for writing upon before the papyrus was adopted for this purpose. It is held that in China writing was very early made permanent on sections of the bamboo, being burned therein by a heated metal stylus somewhat after the fashion of the modern pyrography; this material was displaced, however, in the third century B. C. by silk or cloth, and these, in turn, were superseded by a kind of paper made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree, bamboo fibre, and other substances which came into extensive use during the Han Dynasty (206 B. C.-25 A. D.) and, under the incentive of which, as we are told, an extensive imperial library of the reigning house was collected. And, to the present day, palm leaves are used for writing material in parts of India.

Besides the simpler arrangements of the materials, as in the roll, tablet, or leaf, there were arrangements of the material more resembling the book form of to-day, as in the diptych and the triptych. The _diptych_ was made of two tablets of wood or of other material and resembled our double slates, having the tablets for the writing sunken below the protecting edges. These were hinged together and covered on their protected sides with a coating of wax. On this wax surface the Greeks and Romans wrote with a stylus. The writing could easily be obliterated by simply melting the wax, when it became a prepared plate for another inscription. The _triptych_ and the _polyptych_, as the respective words suggest, consisted of three or four or more leaves hinged together and made available for literary or other inscriptions, after the manner of the diptych.

XII

INKS

Any reference to the literary productions of the past and to the materials preserving and perpetuating written records, including the Bible and sacred history, would be deficient were the qualities of the early inks disregarded. The very ink in which the ancient literature, sacred and classic, was embodied had an importance scarcely, if any, less than the materials upon which the writing was impressed or recorded. The task of transcribing a book, _e. g._, the Gallic Wars, the Epic of Virgil, or the Bible, was an undertaking of so great magnitude that the conservation of energy, if nothing else, taught the importance of securing and using an ink that had "staying" qualities. No sensible person, no matter when or where he might live, would be apt to spend the time required to copy the Bible in its entirety (a task necessitating the labor of a skillful calligraphist for nearly three years) when all his work would soon be wasted by reason of an impermanent ink.

The makers of the inks used in the early ages had a skill and knowledge in the mixing of pigments or in compounding the ingredients of their inks undiscovered, as yet, and unequaled in modern times. The superiority of the inks known to the ancients has long been the object of surprise and admiration. The inscriptions on mummy-cases, made at a time long antedating the Christian Era, and the writing on manuscripts made in the early centuries of Christian history, in addition to the beauty of the form and finish of the writing, have a freshness of appearance as though they were only of years' instead of centuries' duration. "The survival of papyrus rolls containing the text of the Egyptian ritual known as 'The Book of the Dead,' dating back fifteen centuries B. C., and accompanied with numerous scenes painted in brilliant colors, proves how ancient was this very natural method of elucidating a written text by means of pictures."[36] And among the ancient archæological treasures recently discovered in Crete are stucco designs, the colors of which are almost as brilliant as when laid on, over three thousand years ago.

The composition of the earliest inks has not yet been obtained and, likely, is unascertainable. The first inks are supposed to have been made from _sepia_--the secretion of the cuttle fish--or was composed of a mixture of soot and gum. Later, inks were prepared from the apples of the gall-oak, and from other materials--vegetable and mineral.

Inks of various colors and kinds--red, purple, green, and blue, and, occasionally, of gold and silver--were often employed. The different colored inks were used, respectively, for the in-filling of characters and letters cut in stone and the like; for the ornamentation and embellishment of mummy-cases and manuscripts; for titles and initial letters (especially in the later centuries); for the purpose of emphasis by contrast with other inks; for marginal notes by a later hand (guarding thus against accidental alterations or interpolations of the original writing); and to agree with the esthetic taste of the copyist or his own notion of the value or the importance of the production, as is seen in some beautiful copies of the Bible or portions thereof and in other literary productions of the manuscript age. (See pages 51-54.) The ink used on the early papyrus such as "The Book of the Dead," was usually of a deep, glossy black color though occasionally other colors are also found.

Concerning the picture-writing of the ancient Egyptians, Mr. Wallace Budge of the British Museum says, "Where it was possible the scribe represented an object in its natural colour; he made the moon yellow, the sun red, trees, plants and all vegetables, green; but objects requiring out of the way colours were not so well done, owing to the comparatively limited supply of colours at the disposal of the scribe."[37] In China, during the third century B. C., a dark varnish was employed to paint on silk and bamboo, a brush being used in its application. India ink came into use in China in the seventh century A. D. The beautiful black ink, known to the ancients, greatly deteriorated in quality in the Byzantine period, which may have occasioned the restriction of the red ink to the emperor's exclusive use, as at a later date the purple became the royal color.

Attempts made by chemical analysis and the use of reagents to discover the ingredients of the inks used by the ancients have not yielded very definite results. Beyond some general conclusions as to the components of the first inks, there is little more than conjecture, and it now seems that their manufacture must be classed as one of the lost arts.

XIII

IMPLEMENTS OF WRITING

The implements used for writing necessarily varied in the different ages and diverse civilizations according to the character of the materials successively used and the nature and stage of the civilization. When inscriptions were made in stone of any sort--sand-stone, marble, granite, basalt, or other stone--or in wood, a _chisel_ was the tool. When the material used was lead, ivory, wax, or plastic clay,--bricks, tablets or cylinders--a _stylus_ was used. The stylus was made of bone, ivory, or metal, according to the requirements or tastes in the case. When the writing was with ink, upon leather, parchment, papyrus, paper, and kindred substances, a _pen_--of silver or from a reed or quill--was employed as in modern times. Pens of bronze have been found in tombs. _Brushes_, too, as in China, were used in recording literature. The "_pen-knife_," for fashioning pens from reeds or quills; the _pumice_ stone, for erasures and smoothing the material to be written upon; the _ruler_ and _compasses_, for indicating the lines of writing; _scissors_, _sponge_, and _ink-stand_ (the "writer's ink horn," Ezekiel 9:2, 3), sometimes double for different colored inks; and the _palette_, containing small hollows for the various kinds and colors of inks used, were all paraphernalia of the copyist's profession.

XIV

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PALÆOGRAPHY

_Palæography_ is defined as "that department of historical science which treats of ancient writing." "In the study of handwriting," it has been said, "it is difficult to exaggerate the great and enduring influence which the character of the material employed for receiving script has had upon the formation of the letters." Whether the material was clay, waxen surface, or papyrus, largely determined the formation of the letters. In the broad sense in which it is used in our discussion the term applies, not only to all written records whether upon rolls or codices and without regard to the material, or their form and content, but also includes _epigraphy_ which has to do with inscriptions on monuments or seals, and _numismatics_ which, specifically, designates the inscriptions of coins.

Palæography is both an art and a science. Modern penmanship, while commonly regarded as more of an art than a science, is, in reality, less an art than a science. Indeed, in a broad and a not unwarranted generalization, present-day handwriting is seldom either an art or a science, but rather a desultory and questionable though necessary accomplishment. The invention of the typewriter has not added, in general, to the achievements of penmanship. Penmanship is one of the almost universally neglected sciences of modern times. Unquestionably, if there were more of the "science" of penmanship taught and practiced, and more time and attention devoted to its study and its cultivation, we would have more of the art of handwriting to delight our esthetic sensibilities.

The science of palæography, being related fundamentally to language, links us with prehistoric times. Writing is crystallized speech in visible record, as the phonographic "record" is speech in audible perpetuity. (The author once had the great privilege of hearing the voice of Mr. Gladstone in a thrilling address before the House of Lords;--it was a phonographic "record.") Speech is the most distinguishing of all man's characteristics;--long held to be such. Mr. Huxley once likened human speech to the "Alps or Andes--high over everything else in animal life." Intelligent speech is the broadest line of cleavage to a tenable evolutionary hypothesis of man's origin and development. The capacity of speech at once and forever differentiates man from, and elevates him to, a plane above all other of the manifold creations of God. While speech must be recognized as the most distinguishing faculty of man, writing may be considered the noblest achievement of man. Handwriting may also be regarded the vehicle of expressing and the mode of treasuring and communicating to distant times and places the conceptions of the mind by means of symbols--symbols representing objects or sounds and thus ideas in all their wide applications.

Concerning the genesis and the development of handwriting (and handwriting is a development--a development from very rudimentary beginnings) Professor Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., says: "The use of writing is to put something before the eye in such a way that its meaning may be known at a glance, and the earliest way of doing this was by a picture. Picture-writing was thus used for many ages, and is still found among savage races in all parts of the globe. On rocks, stone, slabs, trees, and tombs, pictures were employed to record an event or tell some message. In course of time, instead of this tedious mode, men learned to write signs for certain words or sounds. Then the next step was to separate the words into letters; and so arose alphabets. The shape of the letters of the alphabet is thought by some to bear traces of the early picture writing."[38] The late Wm. Frost Bishop, D.D., affirms with more of positiveness: "Every letter was at first a picture and perhaps it is but a return to first principles when the children are taught to say, 'O was an Orange, S was a Swan, B was a Butterfly'; or when the alphabet invokes the aid of both pictures and poetry,

'A was an Archer, who shot at a frog; B was a Butcher, who had a great dog.'"

And the eminent Egyptologist, M. Emmanuel De Roget, has shown from sources antedating the Shepherd Kings in Egypt that the letters of the mother alphabet were but modifications of the earliest Hieratic or _priestly_ script as these were modifications of the picture-writing upon the oldest monuments of Egypt. The alphabets of all languages are thus traced back, step by step, to the pictured hieroglyphs from which they have all come. The alphabets of the world are akin, as they all had one common parentage in the picture-writing of the Egyptians.

There have been developed in the long course of time--how long can only be approximately determined--three somewhat independent though not unrelated sources of literature whence all written language has been evolved. These three sources emerge in history, whatever the genesis and however the process, respectively, in the hieroglyphic, the cuneiform, and the alphabetic writings.

(_1_) _The hieroglyphic writing._ In Egypt, and probably in Accadia, the hieroglyphic or picture-writing was the earliest mode of expressing ideas. The new world, also, presents a similar phenomenon, as some of the tribes of the ancient Toltecs of Mexico developed a system of picture-writing resembling somewhat that of North American Indians and akin to the ancient hieroglyphs. With Egyptians this term means, literally, the "sacred" writings. The late Amelia B. Edwards, an Egyptologist of recent years, defines the hieroglyphic or "ideographic" writing as "pictures of objects arranged for the purpose of conveying sequences of ideas, but without any of the connecting links which language supplies." And of picture-writing--in recognition of the universal limitations of this earliest form of written records--one connected with the British Museum says, further: "Picture-writing, moreover, could only place images and symbols side by side, and leave the connection between them to be guessed at or imagined; it could neither show the distinction between the different parts of speech, nor note the flections and tenses of the verbs and the number and case of the nouns, nor fill up the gaps of thought with adverbs, conjunctions, pronouns, etc."[39] The earliest literature of Egypt was recorded in this picture-writing wherein symbols and delineations were cut into or written on stone, as on the obelisks; or in wood, as in the mummy-cases; or were written or painted on papyrus, as in "The Book of the Dead," deposited with the mummies of royal personages in their entombment. Some of these papyri are of very great age. One of these, The Prisse Papyrus, so named from its procurer, is held to be the oldest papyrus in existence. It was found near the middle of the last century in a Theban tomb of the eleventh dynasty and is thus older by centuries than the time of Moses and perhaps antedates the time of Abraham. This Papyrus consists of eighteen pages of beautiful hieratic (priestly) writing and is treasured in the National Library at Paris.

The last century of our Era witnessed two of the most important achievements of human ingenuity in relation to literature: the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform script of Assyria and Babylonia. Both these remarkable achievements are credited to the last century and have added immeasurably to our knowledge of early historical times, corroborated and confirmed much that was obscure and uncertain of the Bible narrative and its teaching, and opened up to the gaze of all men for all time to come the most valuable records of a vast period of human history which otherwise would have remained in unrelieved obscurity. These achievements were the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone and the cuneiform writing.