MATERIALS. The materials used by mankind for purposes of writiml have varied much. Leaves and bark were employed in a primitive state of society. Linen was used by the Egyptians and by the Romans for their religious books. was inscribed or stamped by the people of Baby lonia. Assyria. and Egypt, and by the Greeks and Romans. Prenze was used by the Romans for legal documents. such as the diplumata, giving privileges of citizenship and legal marriage to the soldiers. and lead served also for documents and dedicatory inscriptions. Stone inscriptions belong to the science of epigraphy. Wax tab lets were used by the Greeks and Romans for writing purposes, a use which continued through the Middle Ages and down to modern times, as in the fish markets at Rouen. These were made of wood or ivory in a rectangular form and had a smooth surface slightly sunk and bordered by a rim. The surface was covered with black wax in which the writing was drawn by means of a stylus, a sharp-pointed instrument of bone, ivory. or metal. These tablets might he used singly. or two or three could be bound together. Many wax tablets have been found. as in the mine; of Dacia. which date from A.D. 131 to Ifi7, and at Pompeii dating from A.D. 15 to 112. Papyrus (q.v.) was very commonly used as a writing material in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Papyrus rolls found at Herculaneum. which was destroyed A.D. 79. preserve the earliest Latin writing on this material. Next in date are the deeds of Ravenna, running from the fifth to the tenth century A Of the fifth century are tire ments which contain rescripts written in a Ro man cursive and addressed to Egyptian offieials. The use of papyrus continued through the Middle Ages to some extent for literary works and regu larly for Papal documents down to the eleventh century. Parchment (q.v.) was first employed by the Greeks and Romans simply as a cover for the rolls of papyrus, and it, use for books dates from the latter part of the first century A.n. The tern] used 111 ogre, for ant kiwi of skin book is vellum. which properly de-ignates calfskin. Vellum was employed until the four teenth century, when paper made from rags gen erally took its place. Paper made from cotton had been used for Greek manu-eripts in the thirteenth century. As suggested above, papyrus assumed the roll form. or ro/uno n proper. Parch loent, on the other hand, was made up into book form in imitation of the wax tablets.
PALF:ocdt.trni. Tire -eienee of paleog raphy as applied to the study of Greek writing on papyrus is (d modern date. Greek papyri were discovered at Herculaneum in 1;52. and in 1775 forty or fifty rolls mere found in Eypt, which with one exception were afterwards destroyed. In It-;20 a large number belonging to the second century B.C. Were found at the Serapeum in Alemphis. During the next thirty years there were discovered at important literary papyri. as in 1s21 the Banker Iliad (the last hooka, in Is47 ora tions of llyperides, and in IS49-50 the Harris Homer (parts of Mad xviii., and in book form. books ii.-iv). Far more important diseoverie: were to follow. In 1877 many fragmentary papyri of a more literary character belonging to the Byzantine period were unearthed at Arsinot: in the Faymn district. In ISle. at Socnop:ei Nesns, in the same district, another group was found containing documents ranging from the beginning of the first century A.D. to the middle of the
third. In I359-90 Flinders Petrie found that the eartonnages of mummy coffins at Gurob were made of papyri, written in the third century which proved to be fragments of documents and of literary works. among them pant of the lost Antiopc of Euripides. Fortunately, some papyri were also deposited with the dead, and were thus preserved in fairly good condition. Among these were the Constitution of .1 thew; of Aristotle, the of Herondas, the oration of Hyperides against Athenogenes. and portions of the odes of Bacellylides. In 1896-97 Grenfell and Ilunt, act ing for the Egyptian Fund. ered at Belmesa. the ancient Gxyrhynchus. thou sands of papyri. fragments of literary works, and complete rolls of nonditerary character. Among these were the famous Livia or of parts of the Gospel thew. and pieces from classical writers. They range in date from the first to the century A.D. Previous to these discoveries it \Va.-customary to classify Greek papyri according to the style of writing as the literary or book hand or. again. the cursive. Although these differ in their gen eral style. there is no set form on vellum may be classed as uncial and minuseule. and this distinction eau be sharply drawn in the Middle Ages. when the literary hands were set tled. This is not true, however. of the papyrus period. for it is impossible to distinguish uncials and minuscules, both of which may be written cursively. The uncial of the media-val period is a lineal descendant of the literary style in the papyri. but the medizeval minuscule is a new letter. based 011 the cursive. hint molded into an exact form and bee01111111g 1111:111y the regular 11:11141 of the literary style. Three periods in the history of Greek writing on papyrus it ay be rce• ognized. These correspond to political changes: The Ptolemaic, Me. 323-30, marked by freedom Ild breadth of style; the Boman, from Augustus to Diocletian. marked by roundness and curved, strokes; and the Byzautine, from A.D. 360 to the Arab conquest of Egypt in 640, marked by a large, style.
It is possible that the earliest extant example of writing on vellum is an Egyptian fragment of two loaves containing part of Detniisthenes's speech,De Falser Legatione, in a hand like that of the ilerondas papyrus, written perhaps in the early 'tart of the second century A.D. This is a rare example, and we do not find a rapid increase in the use of vellum until the fourth century, wheu literary works on papyrus are ahnost en tirely lacking and its place was taken by vellum. The oldest vellum manuscripts, excepting, the fragment of Demosthenes, are the great uncial codices of the Bible, the Codex Vatieanus and the Codex `inaitic•us. :\lanuseripts written in Greek minuscules are numerous. They are classified as the from the ninth to the middle of the tenth century; the rctusti, from the middle of the tenth to the middle of the thirteenth cen tury; the recent iorrs, from the middle of the thir teenth to the middle of the fifteenth century; and the norelli, all of later date. These show a vary ing style of minuscule, the earliest being the most simple and exact.