BOOK. The aim of the first scribes in the choice of the material for their work was to give durable form to the production. Accordingly, the earliest inscriptions which have been pre served were placed on stone or baked brick or metal, rather than a more flexible but more per ishable material. The Ten Commandments, for instance, were graven on slabs of stone. Jose phs records that the columns on which the chil dren of Seth placed the records of their inventions were of stone and brick. The Laws of Solon (about 594 tt.c.) were inscribed on wooden planks. The earliest produetions answering to our modern books of which we have any record were the tiles covered with inseriptions in the soft clay by the Chaldean scribes, and rendered permanent by being baked in ovens. The excava tions carried on in Lower Mesopotamia (1895 1901) by Dr. John I'. Peters and others have brought to light, from the ruins of the Temple of Nippur, tablets believed to have been produced about B.C. 6000. The text inscribed on these is, with few exceptions. devoted to the hymns and invocations used in the temple services. The larger of these Chaldean tablets are flat, and measure 9 inches by 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 Roman stylus). not pointed, hut triangular, at the end. The impression hears, 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 what 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, differed 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 poems. The book in question bears the title Y-king, the Book of the ..Metamorphoses 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 diphth, cal. and writings upon them came to be known by the same name. Ctesias speaks of the diphtherai basilikai, royal books (or writings or documents) of the Persians, and Ilerodotus says that such skins were used in the earlier ages even in Egypt. it was, however, not until the production of parchment (q.v.) (ntembrann or peryanicna), 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 long-establisbed papyrus, which it was, however. destined to out
last for many centuries. The name parchment (pergamr»a) is derived from the city of Perga mum, where, according to the tradition, it was first prepared under the direction of King Eu menes 11. about c.c. 190.
It is probable that parchment had actually been produced considerably before this (late; but great, impetus was undoubtedly given to its use and its inannfaeture was improved, owing to the embargo placed by the Egyptian King, Ptolemy Philadelphus, on the exportation from Egypt of 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 Egypt. 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 he no more." The material used from the papyrus-plant was the pith of the stein, 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 (g1,8Xos, liber, 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 known to have been preserved has been assigned to a date about B.C. 2000. or 4000 years later than the baked tiles of Chaldea. The papyrus hook, whether Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, was arranged very much like a modern mounted map. The length of the mate rial, written on one side only, was wound upon a wooden roller. Such rolls were found often 20, 30, or even 40 yards long. Herodotus tells us of a eopy of the Odyssey written on one such roll. With the increasing scarcity of papyrus, the im proved parchment came into general use, super seding papyrus by the beginning of the Seventh Century. lint from the Fourth Century rt.c. to the close of the Sixth Century A.D., by far the larger proportion of the literature of the world was recorded on sheets of papyrus. The perisha 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 us in such fragmentary condition, but that so many important works have been preserved.