THE MATERIAL USED FOR WRITING IN ANCIENT TIMES

At the request of a dear friend, who requested definitions for the materials used in ancient times
for writings? I list the following:

INSCRIPTIONS:The term inscriptions means any written documents, whether on stone, clay,
papyrus, or any other material.

OSTRACA: is defined as pottery fragments commonly used as writing material, since they were
cheaper than papyrus. The term is sometimes loosely used to include flakes of limestone.
Inscribe with ink, potsherds were widely used for letters, receipts, school texts, etc. Important
finds of ostraca have been made at Samria and Lachish.

PAPYRUS: is a tall, aquatic reed plant, Cyperus Papyrus, noted especially for its use for ancient
writing material. The papyrus plant, so abundant in ancient Lower Egypt, is no longer found
there. Plural: Papyri

LEATHER: The earliest use mention of leather documents is found in a text of the Fourth
Egyptian Dynasty (2550 B.C.). A collection of Aramaic letters to Persian officials in Egypt
dating from the fifth century B.C. is all on leather. Mr. Kifa correctly says that leather in
Mesopotamia could not survive. In Palestine the Dead Sea Scrolls survived, they were all written
on leather, except the Copper Scroll. The Talmudic law required copies of the Hebrew Torah,
which were intended for public worship to be inscribed on leather rolls.

PARCHMENT: is a writing material made from the skins of sheep or goats, which gradually
supplanted papyrus because of its durability. Parchment began to replace leather in the third
century A.D. Parchment differs from leather in not being tanned. A superior quality of parchment
known as vellum was made from the skin of calves or kids. You may see a reference to
parchments in II Tim. 4: 13. The Aramaic language, written in a cursive alphabetic script, was
used in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period, as is attested by Aramaic notations on
some cuneiform tablets. Since papyrus or leather would be the usual writing materials in this
case, they have long since perished in the dam Mesopotamian soil as mentioned correctly by Mr.
Kifa. The dry weather conditions in Egypt made it possible to preserve the Aramaic Papyri of
Elephetine.

STONE: In all ages stone has been used for inscriptions when a high degree of permanence was
desired. Since stone was relatively scarce in Mesopotamia, however, so that cuneiform
inscriptions on this material are confined almost exclusively to royal texts or public stelae like
that which bears the Code of Hamurabi (Aramaic: Amo-Ur-Rabi=leader of the city dwellers=in
Arabic: raiss sukkan almudun). In Syria-Palestine stone was likewise used for inscriptions in
Aramaic or Canaanite intended for public display, such as the Moabite Stone, Siloam
Inscriptions, etc.

1
METAL: was much less common than stone. To this belongs the copper scroll discovered at
Qumran, popularly know as The Dead Sea Scrolls. Cuneiform inscriptions in Sumerian,
Akkadian, and Old Persian were incised on objects made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze.

CLAY: Was the most readily available and thus the cheapest material for writing purposes in
Mesopotamia. To this material belong the Sumero-Akkadian pictographic signs, which were
written in peculiar cuneiform shapes. It later spread to the Hittites, Hurians, and Elamites. The
use of clay was not confined to Mesopotamia and Anatolia, but spread to Syria-Palestine and
Egypt when Akkadian became the language of international diplomacy. The best evidence of this
is the correspondence between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the Babylonian, Mitannian, Hittite, and
Atzawan rulers, as well as the local governors of the dependent states in Syria-Palestine between
the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. that came to light by the discovery of Tell El-Amarna
in Egypt.

POSTSCHRED: Is the use of pieces of broken and discarded pottery as a writing material.
These Ostraca were available and less costly. We find them in Egypt from the Old Kingdom
(2664-2155 B.C.). Texts written on Astraca have been found in Egyptian (hieratic, demotic, and
Coptic), Aramaic, and Greek. In Mesopotamia, Ostraca was used for Aramaic, which was written
with pen and ink.

LINEN: Was another material used for writing. No trace of Linen writing was found in Western
Asia, if indeed it was used. It was employed in Egypt, Italy. There is no indication of its use in
biblical literature.

WOOD and BARK, found in Egypt. It was used in Mesopotamia, but perished. We know that
from the depiction of scribes in the Assyrian reliefs of 700B.C. An eighth century B.C. relief
from Zinjirli in N. Syria shows a similar scene. There are many references in the Bible to the use
of wood fro carving, they are found in the books of Num., Eze., Isa., Exod., and Luke.

Ancient Writing Materials

Contents: Introduction * Papyrus * Parchment * Paper * Clay

Introduction

2
Biblical manuscripts, with a few minor exceptions such as verses written on amulets and pots,
are written on one of three materials: Papyrus, Parchment, and Paper. Each had advantages and
disadvantages. Parchment (treated animal skins) was by far the most durable, but also the most
expensive, and it's difficult to get large numbers of sheets of the same size and color. Papyrus
was much cheaper, but wore out more quickly and, since it is destroyed by damp, few copies
survive to the present day, except from Egypt (and even those usually badly damaged). Paper did
not become available until relatively recently, and while it was cheaper than parchment once
paper mills were established, the mills had high overhead costs, so they were relatively few and
far between; paper was by no means as cheap in the late manuscript era as today (when paper is
made from wood pulp rather than rags).

The following sections discuss the various types of ancient writing materials and how they were
prepared.

Papyrus
The earliest relatively complete description of how papyrus was prepared comes from Pliny's
Natural History (xiii.11f.): "Papyrus [the writing material] is made from the papyrus plant by
dividing it with a needle into thin [strips], being careful to make them as wide as possible. The
best quality material comes from the center of the [stalk]," with lesser grades coming from nearer
to the edges. The strips are placed upon a table, and "moistened with water from the Nile...
[which], when muddy, acts as a glue." The strips are then "laid upon the table lengthwise" and
trimmed to length, after which "a cross layer is placed over them." These cross-braced sheets are
then "pressed together, and dried in the sun."

This statement has its questionable parts -- e.g. there is no evidence that
water from the Nile as such can be used as a glue, though it is possible
that some sort of glue could be made from some sort of soil found by the
Nile. Nonetheless the basic description is certainly true: The stalks were
sliced, set side by side, braced by having another layer of strips glued
across them perpendicularly, pressed, and dried.

Papyrus sheets came in all sizes, depending on the size of the usable
strips cut from the plant; the largest known are as much as two-thirds of a
metre (say 25 inches) wide, but the typical size was about half that, and
occasionally one will find items not much bigger than a business card
(presumably made of the leftovers of larger strips trimmed down to size).

The best papyrus could be sliced thin enough that the final product was
flexible and even translucent, like a heavy modern paper, though it could
not be folded as easily.

The plant itself, shown at left, is a tall, slender stalk topped by a bushy growth of leaves. It grows
in water, with the height of the stalk depending on the species and conditions but generally quite
tall.

3
What happens after the sheets were made depends on the purpose for which the papyrus is
intended. Individual sheets of papyrus were of course often sold for use in record-keeping,
memoranda, writing training, etc. It is believed that some really coarse papyrus was used
exclusively for wrapping rather than writing. But we are most interested in books. When working
with papyrus, the scroll was genuinely the more convenient form. The individual leaves were
bound together edge to edge (Pliny tells us that the best leaves were always placed on the outside
of the scroll, but it is not clear whether this was because they were stronger or because it made
the scroll look better and more saleable). The standard roll, again according to Pliny, was 20
sheets, which would mean a scroll about 5 metres long (though longer scrolls are certainly
known -- Papyrus Harris I, British Museum 10053, is roughly 40 metres long).

Scrolls also have the advantage that they allowed a continuous curve, which did not excessively
stress any particular point of the papyrus. A papyrus codex had to have a single sharp fold (either
in a single sheet or at the joining of two sheets). This naturally was a very fragile point; even the
nearly-intact P66 is much broken at the spine, and to my knowledge, only one single-sheet
papyrus (P5) has portions of both the front and back sheets of a folded leaf (and, in fact, I know
of no proof that the two halves -- which are not joined; they are part of the middle of a page --
are in fact part of the same sheet, though it is generally assumed and several scholars have made
rather extravagant assumptions on this basis).

Scrolls were made to certain standards -- e.g.

the horizontal strips of each sheet were placed
on the same side of the scroll, since only one
side was likely to be written upon, and it was
easier to write in the same direction. See the
illustration at right, of the Rhind Papyrus,
clearly showing lines between papyrus strips.
(The Rhind Papyrus, acquired in 1858 by A.
Henry Rhind, is a fragmentary Egyptian
document outlining certain mathematical
operations. It was written by a scribe named
Ahmose probably in the Hyksos period,
making it, in very round numbers, 3700 years
old; it is thought to be a copy of a document a
few hundred years older still, written during the
period of the Twelfth Dynasty. This makes it
one of the oldest mathematical documents
extant.)

It is widely stated that (with the exception of

opisthographs) scrolls were only written on one side, and that this was always the side where the
strips ran horizontally. While this seems to be nearly always true of Greek papyri, Egyptian
papyri sometimes used both sides, and we are told that some papyri had their texts written on the
inside and a summary on the outside.

4
Most scrolls were set up so that the lines of writing paralleled the longer dimension of the scroll
-- that is, if === represents a line of text, a typical scroll would look something like this:

+---------------------------------------------+
| === === === === === === === === === |
| === === === === === === === === === |
| === === === === === === === === === |
| === === === === === === === === === |
+---------------------------------------------+

Suetonius, however, says that pre-Imperial Roman legal scrolls went the other way, that is

+----------+
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
| === === |
+----------+

If there are survivals of this format, though, my sources fail to mention it.

It is thought that early papyrus rolls were sewn together, but this caused enough damage to the
pages that bookmakers early learned to glue the sheets together. From ancient descriptions and
illustrations, it seems that the scroll would would then normally be wrapped around a rod,
usually of wood (Hebrew Torah scrolls generally had two rods, at inner and outer ends), though
few such rods survive. It was not unusual for a titulus, or title-slip, to be pasted to the outside.

One of the real problems with papyrus was its fragility. Damp destroys it (there are few if any
papyrus palimpsests), which is why papyrus manuscripts survive only in Egypt and a few other
very dry locations. And while exposure to dry conditions is not as quickly destructive, the
papyrus does turn brittle in dry conditions. It would be almost impossible make a standard
reference volume, say, on papyrus; it just wouldn't last.

It will be seen that papyrus was used as a writing material for at least three thousand years. It is
nearly sure that the earliest Christian writings were on papyrus. As the church grew stronger and
richer, the tendency was to write on the more durable parchment. Our last surviving papyrus
Bible manuscripts are from about the eighth century. It is thought that manufacture of papyrus
ceased around the tenth century.

Leo Deuel, in Testaments of Time: The Search for Lost Manuscripts & Records (p. 87), reports
"[the] Church continued using papyrus for its records and bulls into the eleventh century. The last
document of this nature which bears a date is from the chancery of Pope Victory II, in 1057."

Parchment

5
The history of parchment is among the most complicated of any writing material. The historical
explanation, both for the material and for the the name, comes from Pliny (Natural History
xiii.11), who quotes Varro to the effect that a King of Egypt (probably Ptolemy V) embargoed
exports of papyrus to Pergamum (probably during the reign of Eumenes II). This was to prevent
the library of Pergamum from becoming a rival to the Alexandrian library. Eumenes's people
then developed parchment as a writing material, and the term "parchment" is derived from the
name Pergamum.

The difficulty with this theory is that skins were in use for books long before the nation of
Pergamum even existed.

Parchment must really be considered the result of a long, gradual process. Leather has been used
as a writing material for at least four thousand years; we have from Egypt the fragments of a
leather roll thought to date to the sixth dynasty (c. 2300 B.C.E.), with an apparent reference to
leather as a writing material from several centuries earlier. We have a substantial leather roll from
the time of Rameses II, and one which cannot be precisely dated but which is thought to go back
to the Hyskos era several centuries before that.

But leather is not truly parchment. Leather is prepared by tanning, and is not a very good writing
material; it is not very flexible, it doesn't take ink very well, and it will usually have hair and
roots still attached.

Parchment is a very different material, requiring much more elaborate preparation to make it
smoother and more supple. Ideally one started with the skin of young (even unborn) animals.
This skin was first washed and cleansed of as much hair as possible. It was then soaked in lime,
stretched on a frame, and scraped again. (The scraping was a vital step: If any flesh at all
remained on the skin, it would rot and cause the skin to stink terribly.) It was then wetted, coated
in chalk, rubbed with pumice, and finally allowed to dry while still in its frame. This process
obviously required much more effort, and special materials, than making leather, but the result is
a writing material some still regard as the most attractive known to us.

Certainly it was the best writing material known to the ancients. Smoother than leather or
papyrus, it easily took writing on both sides, and the smoothness made all letterforms easy -- no
worries about fighting the grain of the papyrus, e.g. And it was durable. Plus it was quite light in
colour, making for good contrast between ink and background.

This does not mean that parchment was a perfect writing material. It is denser than papyrus,
making a volume heavier than its papyrus equivalent. And the pages tend to curl. Plus it was
always expensive.

And, just as with papyrus, there are differences between the sides: The flesh side is darker than
the hair side, but it takes ink somewhat better. The differences in tone caused scribes to arrange
their quires so that the hair side of one sheet faced the hair side of the next, and the flesh side
faced the flesh side. It is reported that Greek manuscripts preferred to have the flesh side be the
outer page of a quire, while Latin manuscripts tended to arrange their quires with the hair side
out.

6
Another disadvantage of parchment, from our standpoint, is that it was reusable. Or maybe it's an
advantage. The very smoothness and sturdiness which make parchment such a fine writing
material also make it possible to erase new ink, and even old writing. Combine this with the
expense of new parchment and you have ample reason for the creation of palimpsests -- rewritten
documents. Many are the fine volumes which have been defaced in this way, with the under-
writing barely legible if legible at all. And yet, had they not been overwritten, the books might
not have survived at all; who can tell?

Paper
There is little that needs to be said about paper, except that early paper was made from rags, e.g.
of linen, rather than wood pulp, and that it became popular as a writing material only around the
twelfth century. Some additional detail can be found in the section on Books and Bookmaking.

Clay
It may seem odd to include clay as a writing material, since there are no clay New Testament
manuscripts. But there are ostraca and talismans, some of which are clay, and of course there are
many pre-New Testament writings found on clay: The cuneiform texts of Babylonia and
Sumeria, plus the ancient Greek documents in Linear B. Since these give us our earliest
linguistic evidence for both Greek and the Semitic languages, it is hardly fair to ignore these
documents.

Such of them as are left. It is not just papyrus that is destroyed by water. Properly baked clay is
fairly permanent, but sun-dried clay is not. Most of the Linear B tablets that survive from Pylos,
for instance, survived because they were caught in the fire that destroyed the citadel. A number
of cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, initially perfectly legible, are now decaying because
they were displayed in museums which did not maintain the proper humidity (in some cases,
indeed, they left them encrusted with salts, which hastens the process of destruction). We think of
clay as if it were a rock, and we think of rocks as permanent -- but it really isn't so. Who can say
what treasures on clay have been destroyed, possibly even by moderns who did not recognize
what they were....