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TYPOGRAPHIC TECHNICAL SERIES FOR APPRENTICES--PART VIII--NO. 49


  BOOKS BEFORE
  TYPOGRAPHY

  A PRIMER _of_ INFORMATION ABOUT THE
  INVENTION OF THE ALPHABET AND
  THE HISTORY OF BOOK-MAKING
  UP TO THE INVENTION OF
  MOVABLE TYPES

  BY
  FREDERICK W. HAMILTON, LL.D.

  EDUCATIONAL DIRECTOR
  UNITED TYPOTHETAE OF AMERICA

  PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
  UNITED TYPOTHETAE OF AMERICA
  1918



  COPYRIGHT, 1918
  UNITED TYPOTHETAE OF AMERICA
  CHICAGO, ILL.




PREFACE


An attempt has been made in this book to trace briefly the story of the
book from the earliest attempts made by mankind to convey a message by
marks on some substance down to the invention of movable types. The
development of writing is rapidly traced from the earliest known
pictures and sign marks to the present day. The discussion covers the
subjects of writing materials and how they were made; the evolution of
the book; the conditions of manufacture, distribution, and preservation
of books before printing, and the conditions out of which sprang the
invention of typographic printing.

It is believed that a comprehensive knowledge of the main facts in this
long story will be of great value to the young printer, and it is hoped
that he may be interested to continue the study in some of the many very
excellent books which are available. A short list of a few of the best
and most accessible authorities in English will be found on page 44. It
has not been thought worth while to refer to books in other languages.

The story of the efforts of men to convey their thoughts to the absent
is one of absorbing interest and leads into many pleasant byways of
knowledge. While we are studying the processes and materials of a trade
by which we hope to gain a livelihood it is well to know something about
the men of the past whose accomplishments we inherit. To know something
about the men of another time who made this time possible, what they
did, what manner of men they were, how they lived, and what they created
for us, is the task of this and the following volumes in Part VIII of
this series.




CONTENTS

                                                 PAGE

  CHAPTER I     THE ORIGIN OF THE ALPHABET          1

  CHAPTER II    WRITING MATERIALS                   9

  CHAPTER III   THE EVOLUTION OF THE BOOK          15

  CHAPTER IV    MAKING THE MANUSCRIPTS             20

  CHAPTER V     ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL LIBRARIES     27

  CHAPTER VI    THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA              37




BOOKS BEFORE TYPOGRAPHY




CHAPTER I

_The Origin of the Alphabet_


The story of printing really begins with the earliest dawn of
civilization. As soon as men developed a language, even of the simplest
sort, they felt the necessity of a means of communication with those who
were not present. This would be needed for the identification of
property, the making of records, the sending of orders or information,
the making of appointments, and many other purposes which would be
developed by the needs of even the most rudimentary civilization. We
accordingly find evidences of devices to accomplish these ends
associated with the earliest human remains. While the cave man was
disputing food and shelter with the cave bear, the sabre-tooth tiger,
and the mammoth in those places which are now the seats of the most
advanced civilizations, he scratched or painted outline sketches of the
animals he fought, and perhaps worshipped, on the wall of a cave or on
the flat surface of a spreading antler or a piece of bone.


[Illustration: The oldest known attempt to carve a picture. It dates
from the cave period and was found at Dordogne, France.]


One of the greatest single steps in civilization was the advance from
the use of rough stone implements and weapons to the use of chipped and
finished stones for the same purpose, commonly referred to as the
transition from the paleolithic to the neolithic age. Just how long ago
that was no one knows and only geologists can guess. Among remains
dating from this period of transition found in the little village of Mas
d'Azil in France, there have been discovered a number of painted
pebbles. Whether these were game counters, ownership tags, records, or
what not, no one can guess. Whether the marks on them were purely
mnemonic signs, numerals, or verbal signs of some sort, no one knows.
That they were in some way, however, the ancestors of modern printed
matter is unquestionable.


[Illustration: Pebbles from Mas d'Azil.]


Among the earliest methods of communicating ideas to the absent,
pictures hold the largest place. Other methods were knots, ordinarily
known by the name _quipus_ which they bear among the ancient Peruvians.
The number and arrangements of the knots and the color of the cords made
possible a considerable range of expression. Closely associated with
these were tallies, or notched sticks, and wampum, or strings of colored
shells or beads arranged in various designs. Here perhaps may also be
classed the so-called Ogham inscriptions, made by arrangements of short
lines in groups about a long central line. The short lines may be either
perpendicular to the central line or at an angle to it. They may be
above it, below it, or across it, thus providing a wide range of
combinations with a corresponding variety of expression. These primitive
methods survive in the rosary, the sailor's log line with its knots or
the knotted handkerchief which serves as a simple memorandum. They may
run all the way from purely mnemonic signs to a fairly well developed
alphabet.

More important in its development, however, was the picture. Primitive
men all over the world very soon learned to make pictures, very crude
and simple to be sure, but indicating fairly well what they stand for.
These pictures may be so arranged and conventionalized as to convey a
good deal of information. The position of a human figure may indicate
hunger, sleep, hostility, friendship, or a considerable number of other
things. A representation of a boat with a number of circles representing
the sun or moon above it may indicate a certain number of days' travel
in a certain direction, and so on indefinitely. This method of writing
was highly developed among the North American Indians, who did not,
however, get beyond it.


[Illustration: Indian picture writing. The biography of a chief.]


The next step forward is the attempt to represent abstract ideas by
means of pictures. The picture then ceases to represent an object and
represents an idea. This is called an ideogram. While it has certain
very obvious limitations, it has one advantage over more developed
systems. The ideogram does not represent a word; it represents an idea.
Consequently it may be intelligible to people who, in spoken language,
represent the idea by very different words. For example, there are
several cases where a common set of ideograms appears to have been used
as a means of communication between people whose spoken language was
mutually unintelligible. The Chinese sign for "words" made
thus [Illustration: [Chinese character]] is a typical ideogram. It
represents a mouth with vapor rising from it.

The next step forward is the development of the ideogram into the
phonogram, or sound sign. When this step is taken, the ideogram, besides
representing an idea in a general way, represents a sound, usually the
name of the object represented by the ideogram or by one of its
components. A succession of these phonograms then represents a series of
sounds, or syllables, and we have a real, though somewhat primitive and
cumbrous, written language. Concurrently with this process the original
picture has become conventionalized and abbreviated. In this shape it is
hardly recognizable as a picture at all and appears to be a mere
arbitrary sign.


[Illustration: Comparative ideographs.]


After a time men discovered that all the sounds of the human voice were
really decomposable into a very few and that all human speech,
consisting as it does of combinations of these sounds, could be
represented by combinations of simple phonograms each of which should
represent neither an idea nor a syllable but one of the primary sounds.
The phonograms were then greatly reduced in number, simplified in form,
and became what we know to-day as letters.

This process appears to have gone on independently in many parts of the
world. In many places it never got to the point of an alphabet, and this
arrest of development is not inconsistent with a high degree of
civilization. The Chinese and Japanese script, for example, are to this
day combinations of ideograms and phonograms.

Three of the great peoples of antiquity carried this process nearly or
quite to a conclusion, although the method followed and the results
reached were quite different in the three cases. The three
civilizations, of the Egyptians in the Nile Valley, the
Assyrio-Babylonians in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
and the Cretans, centering in Crete but spreading extensively through
the Mediterranean Basin, developed three great varieties of script. All
started with pictures. The Egyptians continued to use the pictures in
their formal inscriptions down to the Persian conquest in the 6th
century B.C. This picture writing or hieroglyphic was well developed
and in the phonogram stage about 5000 B.C. The formal picture writing
of the hieroglyphic was admirably suited to formal inscriptions either
carved in stone or painted on a variety of substances. It was not
suited, however, to the more rapid work of the recorder, the
correspondent, or the literary man. The scribes, or writers, therefore
developed a highly abbreviated and conventionalized form of hieroglyphic
which could be easily written with a reed pen on papyrus, a writing
material to be described presently. The first specimens of papyrus,
containing the earliest known specimens of this kind of writing, called
hieratic, date from about 3550 B.C. Even the hieratic was too formal
and cumbersome for the common people and was further abbreviated and
conventionalized into an alphabet known as the demotic which was in
common use among the Egyptians from about 1900 B.C. to 400 A.D.


[Illustration: Names in hieroglyphic text of three of the most famous
Pharaohs, Cheops, Thothmes III and Rameses II.]


Among the Assyrio-Babylonians the use of an entirely different kind of
writing material caused the development of a very different type of
script. The lands inherited by these people were clay lands and they
made enormous use of clay and its products for building materials,
utensils, and also writing material. The early inhabitants of this
region very soon found that a permanent record could be made by marking
a lump of soft clay with a sharp stick and then drying it in the sun or
baking it in an oven. Naturally the picture very soon degenerated into a
series of marks made by holding the stick, or pointed implement, nearly
parallel to the clay and then thrusting it into the surface. The
resultant mark was like the following: [Illustration: cuneiform] This
script is called "cuneiform," from two Latin words meaning "wedge
shaped," from the obvious resemblance of the marks to wedges. The number
and arrangement of these marks developed successively into phonograms,
ideograms, and letters. The language, which was very complicated in its
written form, retained all three to the last.


[Illustration: First line of a cuneiform inscription commemorating
victory of Shalmaneser over Hazael, King of Syria.]


The Cretan civilization has been unknown to us save through a few
uncertain references in Greek literature until within about twenty
years. Within that time many excavations have been made, many objects
recovered, and much progress made in the reconstruction of this ancient
civilization. The written language has been at least partially
recovered, although we are not sure that we have all the signs and we do
not know how to read any of them. These signs were of two sorts,
described as hieroglyphic and linear. The hieroglyphic signs are either
ideograms or phonograms. Whether the linear signs are a true alphabet or
a syllabary (each sign representing a complete syllable) we do not know.
These linear signs have close relations on one hand to the signs used in
the island of Cyprus, which we know to have been a syllabary, and on the
other to the signs used by the Phoenicians, which we know to have been
an alphabet.

There seems to be no question that the final step of discarding all
signs excepting the few representing the primary sounds of human speech,
and thus developing an alphabet pure and simple without concurrent use
of phonograms and ideograms, was made by the Phoenicians. The
Phoenicians were a trading people of Semitic origin (akin to the Jews
and other allied races) whose principal seats were at the eastern end of
the Mediterranean. Various theories have been put forth as to the origin
of their alphabet. It is clear that they did not originate it absolutely
but developed it from previously existing material. Attempts have been
made to connect it with the Assyrian cuneiform, and for many years it
was commonly believed to have been derived from the hieratic form of the
Egyptian. The evidence of later discoveries, together with the
difficulty of reconciling either of these theories with all the known
facts, points strongly to the conclusion that the principal source of
the Phoenician alphabet was the Cretan script, probably modified by
other elements derived from commercial intercourse with the Egyptians
and the Assyrians. From the Phoenician came the Greek alphabet. From
the Greek came the Roman, and from the Roman, with very little change,
came our own familiar alphabet. But that is not all. The Phoenician,
through various lines of descent, is the common mother of all the
alphabets in use to-day including those as different from our own and
from each other as the Hebrew, the Arabic, and the scripts of India. It
will be noted that there are now four great families of alphabets. They
are the Aramean which have the Hebrew as their common ancestor; the
Ethiopic which now exists in but one individual; the Indian which now
exists in three groups related respectively to the Burmese, Thibetan,
and Tamil; and the Hellenic, deriving from the Greek. The relations of
these groups are well worth study as indicating ancient lines of
conquest, immigration, and literary influence. The lines of descent are
shown in the table on the following page.

[Illustration: Inscription in the Cretan linear character from a vase.]


  GENEALOGY OF THE ALPHABET

              {                                { Hebrew.
              {                                { Syriac.
              {                                { Mongolian.
              {                       ARAMEAN. { Arabic.
              {                                { Pehlevi.
              {                                { Armenian.
              {                                { Georgian.
              {
              {         {            ETHIOPIC.   Amharic.
              {         {
              {         {                      { Burmese.
              {         {                      { Siamese.
              {         {         {      PALI. { Javanese.
              {         {         {            { Singalese.
              {         {         {            { Corean.
              {         {         {
              {         {         {            { Tibetan.
              {         {         {            { Kashmiri.
  PHOENICIAN. { SABAEAN. { INDIAN. {   NAGARI.  { Gujarati.
              {         {         {            { Marathi.
              {         {         {            { Bengali.
              {         {         {            { Malayan.
              {         {         {
              {         {         {            { Tamil.
              {         {         { DRAVIDIAN. { Telugu.
              {                                { Canarese.
              {
              {                                { Greek.
              {                      HELLENIC. { Latin.
              {                                { Russian.
              {                                { Coptic.

  This table, based on the studies of Canon Isaac Taylor, is taken from
  Clodd's "Story of the Alphabet."




CHAPTER II

_Writing Materials_


As already indicated, the writing materials in use in different places
and at different times have varied greatly. Obviously anything capable
of receiving an impression or bearing a mark of any kind may be used as
material for receiving records or bearing communications.

The surface of a stone, a bone, or a shell, a flat piece of wood, bark
or leaf of a tree, a plate of metal, the facet of a gem, any one of a
thousand things can be used and has been used for this purpose. The
Egyptians and Greeks were in the habit of using the fragments of broken
pottery for their less important records. The materials which have been
most used, however, have been the Assyrian clay tablet, which has been
already described, papyrus, vellum, and paper.

Papyrus was made from a reed which grew abundantly in the Nile Valley
and less abundantly in some other places. It is now nearly extinct but
it grows in small quantities in Sicily, where papyrus is still made for
sale to tourists but not in commercial quantities. The reed was called
by the Greeks "_bublos_," or "_biblos_," from which the Greeks got the
word _biblion_, a book, and we get the words bible, bibliography, etc.

Papyrus was made by cutting the stalk of the reed lengthwise into very
thin strips. These strips were laid side by side on a board until the
desired width was obtained. Another layer of shorter strips was then
laid across the long ones entirely covering them. This mat, or "net" as
it was technically called, was then soaked in the water of the Nile.
Whether there was any particular virtue in the Nile water, which is
always more or less charged with mud, or the desired result was obtained
simply by the action of water on the reed itself, is not clear. After
the soaking was completed, the "net" was dried in the sun, hammered to
expel air and water, polished by rubbing with some hard smooth
substance, and probably sized, although it is possible that all the
sizing necessary was provided by the sap of the reed itself. The sheets
were then trimmed even and joined by the edges into a long strip,
usually of about twenty sheets. This was rolled on a stick and was then
ready for sale as writing material. The quality of the papyrus varied
according to the part of the reed from which the strips were cut, and it
was the commercial custom to put sheets of varying quality into the same
strip or roll. The best sheets were put on the end which would come on
the outside of the roll, grading down to the worst at the other end.
This was done for two reasons: first, in order that the best material
should come where it would receive the most wear, and secondly in order
that in case the roll was not entirely used the waste part should be of
inferior quality. Papyrus continued to be used as the general writing
material of the civilized world until about the time of Christ, and held
its place for certain purposes until the 11th century, at which period
we find it still used for Papal Bulls and other important documents. It
was revived in Egypt by the Copts, as the people of Egypt were then
called, in the 7th century and was used by them extensively until the
middle of the 13th.


[Illustration: Parchment-roll, or volumen. (Our word volume comes from
volumen.)]


From very early ages, leather was more or less used as writing material,
but in the 2nd century B.C., owing, it is said, to the scarcity and high
price of papyrus, Eumenes II, King of Pergamus, a city of Asia Minor,
invented or caused to be invented, a writing material made of dressed
skins. These skins were not tanned but were dressed by another method
which left them flexible but gave them a smooth hard surface which could
be easily written on. This material was called, from the name of the
city, _pergamena_, from which we get our "parchment." This term is now
practically reserved for sheepskins which are harder than other skins
used for the purpose. Parchment was long used for legal documents and is
still used for college diplomas and other similar purposes. The general
term, however, for this type of writing material, which was made from a
variety of skins, is vellum. Vellum, of course, came in sheets, and
while a single sheet might be rolled as diplomas are to this day rolled
for delivery, it was ordinarily used in the sheet form and played an
important part in the development of the book.

In the manufacture of vellum the skins of a variety of the smaller
animals were used. For example, the famous Alexandrian codex, one of the
oldest known copies of the Bible, is written on antelope skin. The skin
was first carefully cleaned and the hair removed by soaking in a
solution of lye. It was then thoroughly scraped with a knife to remove
all fatty or soft parts. It was then rubbed down with pumice stone.
Finally it was polished with agate.

Paper is said to have been invented by the Chinese at an unknown but
very early date. It was introduced to Europe by the Arabs about the 10th
century A.D. It was made of linen or rags and did not vary greatly from
the rag paper of to-day. As the process of manufacture is fully
described in the book on paper (No. 13) of this series, description is
not necessary here. Paper was not much used in Europe until the
invention of printing. Being much less substantial than vellum it did
not commend itself for the making of manuscript books. Paper was,
however, immediately found to be much better suited to printing than any
other material, and with the advent of the printed book it very quickly
drove other writing materials out of common use. Owing to its having
some resemblance to papyrus it was given the old name, the word paper
being derived from papyrus.

Late in the 19th century a new writing material made of wood or other
flexible fibre treated with chemicals and loaded with clay was invented,
to which we also give the name paper. This new material has almost
entirely driven the old rag paper out of the field and is now the paper
of commerce. Much of this material is far inferior to rag paper. The
inferior qualities of it, at any rate, lack durability even when not
exposed to wear. It is good enough for the great number of uses where
permanence is not required. It should only be used for books of
permanent value, especially for records and historical material, when
there can be no doubt of the care used in the manufacture and the
quality of the fibre employed. A 15th-century book on rag paper is as
good to-day as the day it was printed. Most of the paper now in use
possesses no such lasting qualities.

In addition to these three leading materials, much use has been made of
tablets (Latin _tabella_). The commonest form of tablet was a thin board
with one or both sides slightly cut away in such a way as to leave a
narrow rim all around. The shallow depression inside this rim was then
filled with wax sufficiently stiff to hold its position in ordinary
temperatures but sufficiently soft to be easily marked with a sharp
instrument called a stylus. The writing could be easily erased by
rubbing with a hard smooth object, perhaps a ball at the reverse end of
the stylus, and the wax was then ready for another impression. Sometimes
these tablets were made of wood covered with paint or a composition from
which the writing could be easily washed off. This was the prototype of
the schoolboy's slate of to-day and was used for the same purpose. While
tablets were ordinarily used for writing of a purely temporary nature,
they were occasionally used for permanent records and especially for
correspondence. Two or more tablets could be put together with the
wooden sides out, bound, and sealed. In this way the writing was secure
from observation or interference and the tablets were less liable to
injury than papyrus or vellum. Tablets were used at a very early period
and continued to be used, especially for correspondence, all through the
middle ages and into the 16th century. Sometimes a considerable number
of them would be fastened with thongs by one edge so as to form a
continuous document which was one of the precursors of the modern book.
The British Museum has a document of this sort consisting of nine leaves
about 7 x 9 inches. The writing on it is in shorthand, which is by no
means a modern contrivance. This particular document is of Greek origin
and dates from about the 3d century A.D.

The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and other peoples of remote antiquity
used inks made of charcoal or soot mixed with gum, glue, or varnish.
Similar compositions were used to a late date. The Romans made extensive
use of sepia, the coloring substance obtained from the cuttlefish.
Irongall inks, inks that consist of an iron salt and tannin, were
invented by an 11th century monk named Theophilus. Of course these inks
were mixed with coloring matter, and other paints and pigments were used
in the preparation of manuscripts. The earlier printing inks were made
of lampblack and linseed oil. The subject of printing inks is fully
discussed in No. 12 of this series of text-books. The ink was ordinarily
applied by means of reeds which were either beaten out at the end into
fine brushes so that the characters were painted rather than written,
or sharpened and split at the end like a modern pen. Later the quill of
the goose or some other large bird, cut to a point and split, largely
took the place of the reed and continued to be the writer's tool for
centuries. In later years they have been displaced by the modern pen of
steel or gold. It is interesting to note that bronze pens imitating
quills were used by the Romans and some specimens are still preserved.


[Illustration: Mediaeval scribe at work, showing bookcase and writing
materials.]


The mediaeval scribe, or copyist, had in addition to his quill, ink, and
vellum, a pair of compasses to prick off the spacing of his lines, a
ruler and a sharpened instrument or pencil with which to draw the lines
upon which he was to write, a penknife for mending his pens, an erasing
knife for corrections, and pumice and agate, or other smooth substance,
for smoothing the scratched surface. The accompanying illustration shows
the mediaeval scribe and his outfit in an extremely interesting manner.
In the background appears the bookcase with its doors open showing the
manner in which books were then kept, laid on their sides and not
standing on their ends. The writer is busily at work upon his manuscript
and scattered around him are the tools of his trade. The inkstand is on
the table before him, the knife on one of the library shelves, the
compasses, a ruler, a ruling pencil, a rubber for smoothing down the
vellum, an open pen case, and other implements are all clearly shown.




CHAPTER III

_The Evolution of the Book_


As already indicated, ancient books were written on rolls of papyrus.
The technical name of such a roll of papyrus was _volumen_ from which we
get our word volume. With the increasing use of vellum as writing
material came the book as we know it,