Eye of the planet information and analytical portal. Dressed leather for ancient books: the name The origin of the word "parchment"

Since ancient times, people have used written signs and parchment to preserve information. What it is, every student who has been at least a little attentive in history lessons can tell.

The skin of various domestic animals processed in a certain way for household purposes was used by the ancient Persians in the fifth century BC. They called her "diphtheria". In Egypt, papyrus was used for writing. This material was made only here. However, soon the pharaohs banned the export of papyrus from the country. Their goal was to deprive the famous Pergamon library of material for the production of books and glorify the Alexandrian book depository. The inhabitants of the city of Pergamon found themselves in a difficult situation, but began to look for an alternative. Someone mentioned diphtheria. So the ancient parchment came into use. Its production was brought to perfection, and the name has changed.

ancient production

The material, named for the city of Pergamum, was expensive. The skins of rams, pigs, calves (except for donkeys) were processed according to a special technology, multi-stage and long in time. They were thoroughly washed, coarse and hard hair was removed, and soaked for two weeks in a solution of lime. Then the skin, stripped of wool, was stretched over a frame and the subcutaneous tissue was removed. Then the material was polished and smoothed with pumice, rubbed with chalk (to absorb the remaining fat and make the surface uniform). They bleached old parchment by rubbing flour, milk or proteins, although they also produced multi-colored materials. Its cost depended on the thickness. Paints were used for writing, the recipe of which was kept secret, especially important documents were written in silver and gold.

So, parchment (what it is, we have already figured it out) is a material for the production of books, as well as a text already written in manuscript. Despite its high price, the invention of the inhabitants of Pergamum compares favorably with papyrus. It was a stronger and more durable material that could be folded, reused, and written on both sides. But the most important thing is that it was produced in any place where there were animals.

A palimpsest, a special parchment, was also in use. recycled material with old text erased and new written. Sometimes it was possible to read both manuscripts, but in 691 the churchmen forbade erasing the sacred texts.

The advent of paper and mass printing led to a decline in the manufacture and use of parchment, as it was too expensive a material. They were used interchangeably for a while, but in the end paper won out. Today, parchment made from the skins of kosher animals is used only by Jews to write their sacred books.

Household parchment

There is also household parchment. What it is? It has nothing to do with real animal skin material. This is an ordinary waterproof paper, a packaging material that is of plant origin. Vegetable parchment is durable, almost transparent, impervious to fat and water, therefore it is widely used in cooking, pharmacology, and medicine. It was invented at the end of the nineteenth century by the French chemist Guillaume Louis Figier.

Hello everyone, today we will plunge a little into the history of parchment making.

Parchment was made from dry donkey, calf, sheep, goat skin or sheepskin. At first, raw, only dried skins were taken, only in 170 BC in Asia Minor in the city Pergamon improved the production of this material. In Europe, parchment for records was used from the 4th century, although the first mention dates back to the period around 180 BC.

Parchment was used in parallel with up to the 15th century, until it went into use. Valued for its great strength and unlimited shelf life.

Initially, sheets of parchment were stored in rolls, like papyrus. It was not until the fourth to sixth centuries that parchment was used in the form of a sheet. The binding of several sheets of parchment was called a codex.

The history of the manufacture and origin of parchment, describes Pliny in his natural history and claims that parchment was invented on the initiative of Eumenes of Pergamum, it could be either Eumenes I (r. 263 - 241 BC) or Eumenes II. (years of reign 197 - 160 BC). The main purpose of making parchment was to replace papyrus, which was imported from Alexandria and was often in short supply. In addition, parchment was better in practice, since the text could be scraped off and a new one written. Already in the 5th century BC, parchment was a common thing. The making of parchment and its history. The writings on the parchment date back to the 4th Dynasty of Egypt and it was apparently known to all ancient cultures.

The heyday of the use and manufacture of parchment occurred in the Middle Ages and ends with the development of printing in the 16th century. Parchment is still used today, at red carpet meetings, and no one cares that the animal has to be killed first. Human skin for the manufacture of books from parchment was not used and is not used, considering it barbaric.

After the main cleaning of the skin from wool, it was soaked in milk of lime for 7 - 14 days. Then, in order to get rid of the remnants of wool and meat, they pulled it over the frame. Dry skin on the frame was treated with pumice, smoothed and polished after additional procedures. For the manufacture of thin sheets of parchment, the skin of young slaughtered animals was used. In the monasteries, the skins of unborn lambs, the so-called " royal parchment", which was especially tender.

When the text was washed off or scraped off the sheets, the parchment was called " palimpsest"The scraped text often contained precious records of ancient authors. This type of parchment is of great historical value, since it allows you to read an older text with the help of special lamps. The production of parchment and its history are directly related to the development of historical data and their replenishment.

In the manufacture of parchment, three types of parchment were produced: South European, Central European and Byzantine.

Southern European (Italian) is only softly processed on one side, on which the text is applied, the other side remains rough.
Central European (Northern) is processed on both sides, but less softly, inscriptions are also made on both sides.
Byzantine parchment is additionally rubbed with egg white and more polished.

Considering the fact that the making of parchment and its history is directly related to the slaughter of animals, one can imagine how many innocent sheep were gutted for simple writing.

In disputes between representatives of various historical schools regarding certain events, it is customary to refer to ancient documents. Indeed, the surviving documents are extremely important for historical reconstruction. Only now there are serious doubts about the authenticity of many documents of the Middle Ages. And the reason is that material carriers have a limited ability to store information, sometimes priceless, about our past. By historical standards, this is a relatively short period of time - several centuries.
A few years ago, Moscow hosted jubilee readings dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Russian thinker and historian N.A. Morozov, and an international conference on the problems of civilization. Among the presented reports, the attention of researchers was attracted by the work of Igor Shumakh "Parchment and Paper". The author, from the standpoint of natural science and the history of technology, reasonably debunked the prevailing misconceptions about the antiquity of many historical documents. His arguments against the falsifiers of humanity's past remain valid today.

ACCEPTED consider that parchment became widely used as a writing material in the second century BC. This material, according to Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), appeared in the 2nd century BC. It takes its name from the city of Pergamon in western Asia Minor and is associated with Eumenes II, king of Pergamon from 197-159. BC e. The ruler founded the famous Pergamon Library, which contained more than 200,000 scrolls. The artisans of Pergamum knew how to make thin parchment from sheep and goat skin. This point of view is dominant in historical science and is referred to in all encyclopedias and textbooks.
For reference. For the manufacture of parchment, the skin of a calf, kid or lamb no older than 6 weeks was used. It was processed according to a rather laborious technology: it was soaked in running water for 6 days, then the wool was loosened by festering in a damp pit with gilded lime for 12 to 20 days. Following this, the skin was peeled and fermented in oat or wheat bran to remove excess lime from it. Then they were tanned with vegetable extracts. When the skin became soft, leveled; then the previously chalked skin was rubbed with a pumice stone. Such parchment is also called "velen". Using improved technology, parchment was made from stratified leather. The outer layer - from the side of the hairline was tanned and turned into a chevret for leather crafts, and parchment was produced from the inner layer (from the meat side).
At first, scrolls were made from parchment, but soon they began to fold it into notebooks and sew books from these notebooks.
In Russia, the Cathedral Code of 1649 has been preserved (the text was found in 1767 during the convening of the Legislative Commission of Catherine). It is located in the Moscow Armory. The external view of this manuscript is a scroll with a thickness of 22 to 26 centimeters. This is a tape 30 meters long, consisting of 959 sheets of parchment glued one to the other. Back in the 19th century, patent documentation of Great Britain and the United States was drawn up precisely on parchment.
RESEARCH in the field of the history of natural science and technology show that parchment could appear no earlier than the middle of the 15th century. At no other time were there technological and economic preconditions for its appearance. In the 15th century, there was sufficient accumulation of initial capital by merchants so that they began to invest their money in the leather business.
Manuscripts written on parchment using iron gall ink derived from sulfuric acid should be dated after 1625, those written on purple parchment after 1650.
It turns out that any manuscript written on parchment and dating earlier than the 15th century is automatically a fake! There are many such manuscripts. Judging by the "Consolidated catalog of Slavic-Russian handwritten books stored in the USSR. XI-XIII centuries.» (M., 1984), now in our country there are 494 manuscripts in state storage. They are all apparently fake. The same situation with ancient manuscripts in other countries.
"Greek", "Jewish" and "Latin" ancient parchment folios began to "emerge from oblivion" only from the second half of the 15th century, and were actively published and distributed in the 16th century. There is nothing surprising in this, because the technology for making parchment appeared not in ancient times in Pergamum, but in the second half of the 15th century.
It should also be noted that the appearance of a word in a written language usually reflects the time of the appearance of the object itself, which it denotes. Thus, in written English, the skin of a sheep acquired the meaning of parchment (writing material) parchmen, on which official decrees, orders, etc. are written. in the fifteenth century. In the same century, the word vellum also appears in English - dressed goatskin used as parchment. In Russia, parchment was imported, so the word "parchment" was recorded only in the 16th century.
The official founding date of the Vatican Library is June 15, 1475, when Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull on this subject. In 1480, the University of Cambridge began to take collateral for parchment books and manuscripts for loans. This, apparently, also indicates that parchment appeared only in the middle of the 15th century. By the way, it is estimated that for one copy of the Bible published by Gutenberg, about 300 sheepskins were required.
Now about historical documents on purple parchment. Silver nitrate was first obtained and studied by Johann Glauber in 1648-1660. Therefore, the "Code Argenti" (lat. Codex Argenti), a monument of Gothic writing, written in silver on purple parchment with golden capital letters, could not have been created, as it is believed today, in the VI century! Since it was “discovered” in 1665 by the monk Junius in Verdun Abbey near Cologne, it can be assumed that its manufacture began no earlier than 1650.
The motives for making such a unique “artifact” are also understandable: without it, the Habsburg dynasty would have to admit that, at least in the 5th-10th centuries, their ancestors were pagan Goths, and by no means emperors, allegedly descending from Julius Caesar through Constantine the Great. All existing medieval manuscripts on purple parchment should be technologically dated after 1650.
Many manuscripts written in acidic (iron-gall) ink are also considered fakes. The already mentioned Johann Glauber (1604-1668) first obtained sulfuric acid from ferrous sulfate in 1625. Acid should always be stored in thick-walled glass vessels with ground glass stoppers. Thus, the production of sulfuric acid is directly related to the appearance of glassware. And it was Glauber who first used glassware in chemical experiments. Perhaps that is why no acids were obtained before him.
For writing on parchment, iron gall ink was used, the main ingredient of which is the "oak apple" - a spherical, painful growth on a tree that grows mainly on the leaves and thin shoots of oak. Such an outgrowth appears when the gall wasp lays an egg in a growing bud, around which a soft, pale green ball then forms. These "nuts" were crushed and soaked with rainwater in the sun or by the fire. Sometimes white wine or vinegar was used instead of rainwater. This is the first component of iron gall ink.
The second important ingredient is ferrous sulfate, also known as vitriol, ferrous sulfate or "salt of death". It was developed or found in its natural form in Spain, where it was formed as a product of the evaporation of moisture from ferruginous soils. By the end of the 16th century, vitriol was probably produced by placing old iron nails in sulfuric acid. Vitriol was mixed with soaked ink nuts. The resulting liquid slowly changed from pale brown to black. They also added ground gum arabic, not so much for stickiness as for the viscosity of the ink: goose pens, unlike self-records, require viscous ink (gum arabic is dried acacia juice supplied to Europe from Egypt and Asia Minor). Therefore, all manuscripts made with "acid" ink are objectively dated after 1625.
A LOT The myths about ancient documents referred to by historians are also exposed by the true story of the origin of paper. The writing material on which Europeans learned to write and wrote - European rag paper, appeared only in the 14th century. Paper pressed by a press and suitable for printing - in the 16th century, after the Florentine Donato Bramante invented the vertical press in 1508.
Traditional history claims that paper originated in ancient China. The raw material for it in China was allegedly silk trimmings, silkworm cocoon waste, and scraps of old nets. They were soaked and manually rubbed between stones. The slurry obtained in this way was poured onto some smooth surface and pressed with another polished stone. The gruel was aged, dried and turned into a cake like felt.
In the II century BC. e. the Chinese, according to them, began to use crushed mulberry bark and crushed bamboo stalks. The result was Chinese paper, about which in 105 BC. e. official Cai Lun made an official report to the emperor. And the paint that was used to write on paper was ink made from soot mixed with fish glue and musk.
In 1907, an illustrated Buddhist "Diamond Sutra" allegedly made of paper was found in Donghuang, which was printed, according to the Chinese, from wooden matrices in 868. This book consists of seven pages glued together in a scroll almost 5 meters long. The book contains a message that its master Wang Chi carved and printed "for the sake of commemoration of his deceased parents."
In 1957, a message came that in the northern province of China, Shaanxi, a tomb was discovered in the Baoqiao cave, where scraps of sheets of paper were found. The paper was examined and established that it was made in the 2nd century BC.
In 1966, a text on paper dating back to the first half of the 8th century was discovered in a Buddhist temple in southeastern Korea.
Such information can be found in the historical literature. But they contradict the data of natural science. Indeed, about paper, chemical materials science claims that in 800–1,000 years, paper, as a thermodynamically non-equilibrium material, must completely decay.
THEREFORE, in principle, there can be no paper monuments before the 11th century! Whether there was paper in China in the 2nd century or not, it is impossible to say unequivocally. After all, this paper cannot exist in nature today under any storage conditions. This follows from the laws of thermodynamics, one of the fundamental natural sciences.
In 1772-1784 in China, the Manchu emperors, for some reason, falsified historical texts. As a result, Chinese paper "appeared" in the 2nd century BC. e. - just like parchment - in Europe. Asian counterfeiters of the 20th century supported their Asian counterparts from the 18th century with their finds of "ancient" paper.
There was also no ancient Arabic cotton paper. Muslim manuscripts began to be found “miraculously” from the end of the 18th century. Thus, the famous Arab historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who allegedly lived in 1332-1406, was published only in 1868.
In the Encyclopædia Britannica
1771, it is indicated that European or linen (rag) paper appeared in the 14th century. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 clarified that paper began to be used in office work from the second half of the 14th century.
In Russia, the word paper (writing material) is found in the 15th century. It is found along with the words "leaf" and "ten" in the Prologue entry of 1481.
Linen paper in Europe came from linen production waste. In time, the appearance of paper coincides with the growth of merchant activity in Europe in the fourteenth century. We can say that it was the need for office work that prompted the creation of paper. Need determined supply. The first paper from linen rags began to be made in Italy, France and Germany. In England - in 1495, in Scotland - in 1591, in Belgium and Holland - only in 1686. In Muscovy, there were attempts to make paper in 1576 and 1655.
The first paper was uneven and loose. It was possible to write on such paper. But she collapsed very quickly. Rag paper was the least biostable, and mold quickly destroyed the paper fibers.
Donato Bramante (1444-1514) invented the screw press in 1508, which was used to make medals or coins. This invention was made possible by the crank lathe (appeared in 1480). The machine had a foot pedal mechanism, a belt drive through a wheel with a crank and a movable support that allows the turner to work with two hands.
In the middle of the 16th century, Jacques Besson in the Theater of Instruments first described a screw-cutting machine for cutting cylindrical and conical screws with a support and a lathe for turning non-round wood objects using a template. The screw-cutting machine of Jacques Besson made it possible to make a metal screw and nut, and then an improved vertical press.
In 1555, a vertical coinage press was installed at the Paris Mint. The first screw presses used in England were imported in 1561 by Eloi Mestrell from France.
Only with the advent of the screw press in the second half of the 16th century, the paper pressed on it began to go on free sale, and it could be stored for a long time. Bookstores selling books and writing paper first appeared in Moscow in 1580.
Based on the history of the appearance of paper, it can be argued that paper manuscripts that date back to the 16th century are fakes of antiquity. Such a fake is the "oldest" Russian book written on paper - "Teachings of Ephraim the Syrian" (dated
1381), an Arabic manuscript on paper (with the date 866), Greek manuscripts with the dates 1079, 1090, 1095...
And in conclusion, one more remark. Gutenberg could only print his books on parchment, which appeared in the middle of the 15th century. But Gutenberg could not print his books on paper, because press-pressed and printable paper appeared in the 16th century.
Thus, the history of the technological development of mankind shows that the most ancient written information that has come down to us on material media (parchment, and then paper) dates back to the 15th century, and in exceptional cases - to the end of the 14th century. Written documents that are trying to date earlier are nothing more than fakes, the production of which was often motivated by political and ideological interests.

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Victor SAMODELOV.
Collage by Ilya Nikolaev.

For reference. For the manufacture of parchment, the skin of a calf, kid or lamb no older than 6 weeks was used. It was processed according to a rather laborious technology: it was soaked in running water for 6 days, then the wool was loosened by festering in a damp pit with gilded lime for 12 to 20 days. Following this, the skin was peeled and fermented in oat or wheat bran to remove excess lime from it. Then they were tanned with vegetable extracts. When the skin became soft, leveled; then the previously chalked skin was rubbed with a pumice stone. Such parchment is also called "velen". Using improved technology, parchment was made from stratified leather. The outer layer - from the side of the hairline was tanned and turned into a chevret for leather crafts, and parchment was produced from the inner layer (from the meat side).

At first, scrolls were made from parchment, but soon they began to fold it into notebooks and sew books from these notebooks.

In Russia, the Cathedral Code of 1649 has been preserved (the text was found in 1767 during the convening of the Legislative Commission of Catherine). It is located in the Moscow Armory. The external view of this manuscript is a scroll with a thickness of 22 to 26 centimeters. This is a tape 30 meters long, consisting of 959 sheets of parchment glued one to the other. Back in the 19th century, patent documentation of Great Britain and the United States was drawn up precisely on parchment.

RESEARCH in the field of the history of natural science and technology show that parchment could appear no earlier than the middle of the 15th century. At no other time were there technological and economic preconditions for its appearance. In the 15th century, there was sufficient accumulation of initial capital by merchants so that they began to invest their money in the leather business.
Manuscripts written on parchment using iron gall ink derived from sulfuric acid should be dated after 1625, those written on purple parchment after 1650.

It turns out that any manuscript written on parchment and dating earlier than the 15th century is automatically a fake! There are many such manuscripts. Judging by the "Consolidated catalog of Slavic-Russian handwritten books stored in the USSR. XI-XIII centuries.» (M., 1984), now in our country there are 494 manuscripts in state storage. They are all apparently fake. The same situation with ancient manuscripts in other countries.

"Greek", "Jewish" and "Latin" ancient parchment folios began to "emerge from oblivion" only from the second half of the 15th century, and were actively published and distributed in the 16th century. There is nothing surprising in this, because the technology for making parchment appeared not in ancient times in Pergamum, but in the second half of the 15th century.

It should also be noted that the appearance of a word in a written language usually reflects the time of the appearance of the object itself, which it denotes. Thus, in written English, the skin of a sheep acquired the meaning of parchment (writing material) parchmen, on which official decrees, orders, etc. are written. in the fifteenth century. In the same century, the word vellum also appears in English - dressed goatskin used as parchment. In Russia, parchment was imported, so the word "parchment" was recorded only in the 16th century.

The official founding date of the Vatican Library is June 15, 1475, when Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull on this subject. In 1480, the University of Cambridge began to take collateral for parchment books and manuscripts for loans. This, apparently, also indicates that parchment appeared only in the middle of the 15th century. By the way, it is estimated that for one copy of the Bible published by Gutenberg, about 300 sheepskins were required.

Now about historical documents on purple parchment. Silver nitrate was first obtained and studied by Johann Glauber in 1648-1660. Therefore, the "Code Argenti" (lat. Codex Argenti), a monument of Gothic writing, written in silver on purple parchment with golden capital letters, could not have been created, as it is believed today, in the VI century! Since it was “discovered” in 1665 by the monk Junius in Verdun Abbey near Cologne, it can be assumed that its manufacture began no earlier than 1650.

The motives for making such a unique “artifact” are also understandable: without it, the Habsburg dynasty would have to admit that, at least in the 5th-10th centuries, their ancestors were pagan Goths, and by no means emperors, allegedly descending from Julius Caesar through Constantine the Great. All existing medieval manuscripts on purple parchment should be technologically dated after 1650.

Many manuscripts written in acidic (iron-gall) ink are also considered fakes. The already mentioned Johann Glauber (1604-1668) first obtained sulfuric acid from ferrous sulfate in 1625. Acid should always be stored in thick-walled glass vessels with ground glass stoppers. Thus, the production of sulfuric acid is directly related to the appearance of glassware. And it was Glauber who first used glassware in chemical experiments. Perhaps that is why no acids were obtained before him.

For writing on parchment, iron gall ink was used, the main ingredient of which is the "oak apple" - a spherical, painful growth on a tree that grows mainly on the leaves and thin shoots of oak. Such an outgrowth appears when the gall wasp lays an egg in a growing bud, around which a soft, pale green ball then forms. These "nuts" were crushed and soaked with rainwater in the sun or by the fire. Sometimes white wine or vinegar was used instead of rainwater. This is the first component of iron gall ink.

The second important ingredient is ferrous sulfate, also known as vitriol, ferrous sulfate or "salt of death". It was developed or found in its natural form in Spain, where it was formed as a product of the evaporation of moisture from ferruginous soils. By the end of the 16th century, vitriol was probably produced by placing old iron nails in sulfuric acid. Vitriol was mixed with soaked ink nuts. The resulting liquid slowly changed from pale brown to black. They also added ground gum arabic, not so much for stickiness as for the viscosity of the ink: goose pens, unlike self-records, require viscous ink (gum arabic is dried acacia juice supplied to Europe from Egypt and Asia Minor). Therefore, all manuscripts made with "acid" ink are objectively dated after 1625.

A LOT The myths about ancient documents referred to by historians are also exposed by the true story of the origin of paper. The writing material on which Europeans learned to write and wrote - European rag paper, appeared only in the 14th century. Paper pressed by a press and suitable for printing - in the 16th century, after the Florentine Donato Bramante invented the vertical press in 1508.

Traditional history claims that paper originated in ancient China. The raw material for it in China was allegedly silk trimmings, silkworm cocoon waste, and scraps of old nets. They were soaked and manually rubbed between stones. The slurry obtained in this way was poured onto some smooth surface and pressed with another polished stone. The gruel was aged, dried and turned into a cake like felt.

In the II century BC. e. the Chinese, according to them, began to use crushed mulberry bark and crushed bamboo stalks. The result was Chinese paper, about which in 105 BC. e. official Cai Lun made an official report to the emperor. And the paint that was used to write on paper was ink made from soot mixed with fish glue and musk.

In 1907, an illustrated Buddhist "Diamond Sutra" allegedly made of paper was found in Donghuang, which was printed, according to the Chinese, from wooden matrices in 868. This book consists of seven pages glued together in a scroll almost 5 meters long. The book contains a message that its master Wang Chi carved and printed "for the sake of commemoration of his deceased parents."

In 1957, a message came that in the northern province of China, Shaanxi, a tomb was discovered in the Baoqiao cave, where scraps of sheets of paper were found. The paper was examined and established that it was made in the 2nd century BC.

In 1966, a text on paper dating back to the first half of the 8th century was discovered in a Buddhist temple in southeastern Korea.

Such information can be found in the historical literature. But they contradict the data of natural science. Indeed, about paper, chemical materials science claims that in 800-1,000 years, paper, as a thermodynamically non-equilibrium material, must completely decay.

THEREFORE, in principle, there can be no paper monuments before the 11th century! Whether there was paper in China in the 2nd century or not, it is impossible to say unequivocally. After all, this paper cannot exist in nature today under any storage conditions. This follows from the laws of thermodynamics, one of the fundamental natural sciences.

In 1772-1784 in China, the Manchu emperors, for some reason, falsified historical texts. As a result, Chinese paper "appeared" in the 2nd century BC. e. - just like parchment - in Europe. Asian counterfeiters of the 20th century supported their Asian counterparts from the 18th century with their finds of "ancient" paper.

There was also no ancient Arabic cotton paper. Muslim manuscripts began to be found “miraculously” from the end of the 18th century. Thus, the famous Arab historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who allegedly lived in 1332-1406, was published only in 1868.

The British Encyclopedia of 1771 indicates that European or linen (rag) paper appeared in the fourteenth century. The Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 clarified that paper began to be used in office work from the second half of the 14th century.

In Russia, the word paper (writing material) is found in the 15th century. It is found along with the words "leaf" and "ten" in the Prologue entry of 1481.

Linen paper in Europe came from linen production waste. In time, the appearance of paper coincides with the growth of merchant activity in Europe in the fourteenth century. We can say that it was the need for office work that prompted the creation of paper. Need determined supply. The first paper from linen rags began to be made in Italy, France and Germany. In England - in 1495, in Scotland - in 1591, in Belgium and Holland - only in 1686. In Muscovy, there were attempts to make paper in 1576 and 1655.

The first paper was uneven and loose. It was possible to write on such paper. But she collapsed very quickly. Rag paper was the least biostable, and mold quickly destroyed the paper fibers.

Donato Bramante (1444-1514) invented the screw press in 1508, which was used to make medals or coins. This invention was made possible by the crank lathe (appeared in 1480). The machine had a foot pedal mechanism, a belt drive through a wheel with a crank and a movable support that allows the turner to work with two hands.

In the middle of the 16th century, Jacques Besson in the Theater of Instruments first described a screw-cutting machine for cutting cylindrical and conical screws with a support and a lathe for turning non-round wood objects using a template. The screw-cutting machine of Jacques Besson made it possible to make a metal screw and nut, and then an improved vertical press.

In 1555, a vertical coinage press was installed at the Paris Mint. The first screw presses used in England were imported in 1561 by Eloi Mestrell from France.

Only with the advent of the screw press in the second half of the 16th century, the paper pressed on it began to go on free sale, and it could be stored for a long time. Bookstores selling books and writing paper first appeared in Moscow in 1580.

Based on the history of the appearance of paper, it can be argued that paper manuscripts that date back to the 16th century are fakes of antiquity. Such a fake is the "oldest" Russian book written on paper - "Teachings of Ephraim the Syrian" (dated 1381), an Arabic manuscript on paper (with the date 866), Greek manuscripts with the dates 1079, 1090, 1095 .. .

And in conclusion, one more remark. Gutenberg could only print his books on parchment, which appeared in the middle of the 15th century. But Gutenberg could not print his books on paper, because press-pressed and printable paper appeared in the 16th century.

Thus, the history of the technological development of mankind shows that the most ancient written information that has come down to us on material media (parchment, and then paper) dates back to the 15th century, and in exceptional cases - to the end of the 14th century. Written documents that are trying to date earlier are nothing more than fakes, the production of which was often motivated by political and ideological interests.

Larisa Fedorova

From the history of the preprinted book

Article Three

8. Books on parchment.

Parchment - this is untanned skin dressed from the skins of young cattle and small cattle (calves, lambs, kids), less often - from pork skins. In Rome this material was often called membrane , and the manufacturers membranoria .

According to a Greek historian of the 5th c. BC e. Ctesia, the skin was already used as a writing material by the Persians at that time. From there she is under the name diphtheria moved to Greece, where processed sheep and goat skins were used for writing.

The name comes from the name of the capital of the Pergamon kingdom, Pergamon. The city was founded in the XII century. BC, it was the capital in the III - II centuries. BC.

Reconstruction of ancient Pergamon

It was one of the largest craft, trade and cultural centers of that time. Of the cultural monuments, the library should be noted, which was slightly inferior only to the Alexandrian one. The Pergamon Library was founded in the 2nd century BC by King Eumenes II (197 - 158 BC). Archaeologists have found the place where the library was located - it was a round, 45-meter in circumference storage of manuscripts and a large reading room. The library building was facing east. According to the prominent architect of antiquity, Vitruvius, this protected the books from mold, which easily appeared in humid south and west winds, and also improved the natural lighting of the reading room in the morning, when readers were usually busy in the library.

With the invention of one of the most common materials for writing, which turned out to be parchment (you can also find another name: in works on history and source studies, usually parchment - from lat. pergamen), relates the story told by Pliny. According to him, King Eumenes II decided to create a library in Pergamon that would be no worse than the famous Alexandria. The Egyptian king Ptolemy V by a special decree forbade the export from Egypt and the sale of papyrus, which until that moment had been the most common writing material in the entire Mediterranean. Then in Pergamum, as a result of the search for a replacement for papyrus, parchment was invented (hereinafter called the “Pergamum Chart”).

The credibility of this story is questioned by scholars. Most likely, the Pergamon masters possessed special secrets, thanks to which they managed to produce writing material that surpassed papyrus in its properties.

The production of parchment was a very labor intensive process. The raw skin was first soaked in water to soften it, and the coarsest and toughest hair was removed. Then they soaked again, adding lime or ash. This was done to make it easier for the remnants of meat and wool to fall behind the skin. A few (from 3 to 10) days after such treatment and washing with water, the skins were stretched over the frames, and the master, using a special scraper in the form of a crescent, removed the remaining wool on one side and the remains of meat on the other.

The skins were dried with gradual stretching, and then polished and smoothed with pumice.

During the last operation, chalk powder was rubbed into the parchment, absorbing fats not removed during previous treatments. In addition, chalk powder made parchment lighter and more uniform in color. To bleach parchment, flour, proteins or milk were also rubbed into it.

The result was thin, slightly yellowish skin, equally smooth and clean on both sides. The thinner the parchment was, the more expensive it was. The thinnest parchment was made from the skin of unborn lambs.

Two sides are distinguished in parchment - white and smooth (the former inner side of the skin) - and a rougher, yellowish side (the former outer, hairy side of the skin). However, not all surviving samples show side differences.

In the early Middle Ages, almost exclusively monks were engaged in the manufacture of parchment: books were copied in monasteries, and the necessary writing material was also produced in them.

Parchment was much more expensive than papyrus. To make a large book out of it, it was necessary to slaughter a whole herd of animals, and one book could cost as much as the whole estate cost. So, for example, the skins of about 500 animals were required to make the monumental format of the complete Bible.

The advantages of parchment were undeniable: it was more flexible, did not break on folds, is much more durable, strong, scrolls from it did not collapse from frequent rewinding or changes in storage conditions; it was possible to write on both sides without fear of "manifestation" of ink on the reverse side.

All this contributed to the creation and distribution of books in a more convenient form than a scroll - codes ( code - a book made up of separate sheets fastened together; ). The history of this word is curious. In Latin it means tree trunk, log, log. The Greeks and Romans often used waxed wooden boards for writing (cf. Books on wax tablets). Parchment was easy to fold: several sheets of parchment were folded, cut, sewn together and received a book of 4-6 sheets. When folded, it resembled just such a plank, which served as the basis for the name. Book covers (also made of parchment) were often rubbed with cedar oil to protect them from damage by insects. Codes could be leafed through, somehow marked the places to which you need to return - for quoting, for example, which was important in legal and church practice. The parchment codex also had the advantage that the division of the work into parts (“books”) did not require separate scrolls - everything could fit in one book, which took up much less space than several scrolls. Thus, the code was much more user-friendly. This form of books still exists today.

Parchment holds paint well, so the codices were decorated with colored ornaments, turning the manuscripts into real works of art. Sometimes parchment was dyed blue, purple or black and written on with gold or silver dust ground with water and glue. An example of such a book is the Silver Code, a translation of the Bible into Gothic, dating from the 6th century BC. Written on purple parchment in silver. Stored in Sweden. Contains the text of the Four Gospels.

Page from the Silver Codex

The transition to the form of a codex greatly facilitated the rewriting of books: a sheet of parchment was much easier to work with than scrolls.

In the Middle Ages, each codex was copied by a separate copyist. Expensive material and individual calligraphic rewriting made the book itself expensive and rare. Correspondence of books was considered a very important, "charitable" thing, and copyist monks were exempted from all other work in the monastery.

Parchment manuscript of the 7th century. AD

The high cost of the most convenient material for writing at that time caused its constant shortage, and in the Middle Ages, copyist monks often washed away the written text from old books and wrote a new one on the washed surface. The text applied to the surface from which the old one was washed off and scraped off is called palimpsest .

There was a short period during the early days of printing when parchment and paper were used interchangeably. Thus, most of the Gutenberg Bible is printed on paper, but parchment versions have also survived.

The rapid growth of printing in the Middle Ages led to a reduction in the use of parchment, since its price and complexity of production, as well as the volume of production, no longer satisfied the needs of publishers. Since then, and to this day, parchment has been used mainly by artists, for book publishing - only in exceptional cases.

9. Books on wax tablets

Planks in which recesses were made, where wax was poured, ( ceres ) were used by the Greeks and Romans for records that were not meant to be stored for a long time. Drafts, notes, bills, receipts and even letters were written on them. Papyrus brought from distant Egypt was expensive. He only went for books.

A metal or bone stick was used for writing. style (lat. stylos), sharp at one end and rounded at the other. With a sharp end, they scratched out a record on wax, and with a blunt one they smoothed out what was not needed. This is where the expression comes from: he has a good style i.e. he writes well. And this despite the fact that writing sticks have long been out of use.

The tablets were beneficial not only because of their "cheapness", but also because they could serve for a very long time. Having written a letter on a wax tablet, the Greek or Roman usually received it back - with an answer. It was possible countless times to smooth out what was written with the blunt end of the style and write again.

A schoolboy of those times should be imagined sitting with his legs crossed. On the knee is a double-leaf wax tablet. With his left hand he holds it, with his right he writes under the dictation of the teacher. Not a single schoolboy could do without a wax tablet hung from his belt. Many such tablets were found at the Church of St. Jacob in the city of Lübeck (Germany). By the way, here they also found a large number of styles, parchment scissors and sticks, which were used to beat schoolchildren on the fingers.

Wax tablets were used not only by schoolchildren: monks marked the order of church services in them, poets wrote poems on them, merchants - bills, court dandies - notes to ladies or challenges to a duel. Some of them were unsightly beech planks, covered on the outside with leather for strength and covered inside with dirty wax mixed with lard. Others had elegant mahogany tablets. In Paris in the 13th century there was even a special workshop of craftsmen who made tablets.

Portrait of a girl with style and ceres (presumably a young Sappho)

But wax books, or rather little books, are also known. According to some evidence, they were used even in the middle of the 18th century.

The booklet consisted of several boards with a planed middle, into which melted wax of yellow or black color was poured. Holes drilled in two corners; they are threaded with laces for fastening the boards. Of course, the first and last planks were not covered with wax from the outside.

Of course, time did not spare books on wax - we only have what was found by archaeologists, for example, in Pompeii, where the books were suddenly covered with ashes.

In 2000, a similar find was discovered in Russia during excavations in Novgorod. These were three boards, 19 x 15 cm in size, made of linden, one centimeter thick, fastened together. Two outer ceres are original covers with the image of a cross; on the inside - text on wax. Between them is a board with two-sided text. It was the "Novgorod Psalter", created at the end of the 10th - beginning of the 11th century.

"Novgorod Psalter"

Of course, it was poorly preserved: the first tablet of the wooden codex was better preserved, while on others large pieces of text fell off and came down to us in the form of a scree of wax pieces with individual letters or groups of letters. During the restoration, the wax had to be transferred to another base, because under the removed wax on the tablets, barely distinguishable scratched texts were found, which needed to be preserved for further study. There is no other evidence of the discovery of books on wax in Russia.

10. Books on birch bark.

It is a well-known fact that in Russia birch bark was widely used as a material for writing - the outer part of the birch bark from which the plates were made. A thin layer of the bark of young trees was kept in boiling water, a sheet was cut from it, which was not inferior in elasticity to modern paper. To write letters, a bone rod was used - wrote. A ribbon was threaded into the eye of the rod to hang it from the belt. In the old days, people sent birch bark letters to each other - letters: a letter from a customer, a letter from a wife to her husband, i.e. everyday entries: "Bow from Peter to Marya ...", etc.

Veliky Novgorod became the place where the birch bark letters of medieval Russia were first discovered. To date, over a thousand have been found.

But the existence of birch bark writing in Russia was known even before the discovery of letters by archaeologists. So, in the monastery of St. Sergius of Radonezh "the very books are not on the charters ( parchment- L.F.) writing, but on birch bark, ”wrote Joseph Volotsky.

From birch bark they created both books-scrolls and books-codes. Birch-bark books were most widely used among the peoples of North India. But they, dated to the 9th century A.D. e., few.

The following fact is interesting. The Institute of History of the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok received an unusual manuscript called "Poetry". The manuscript is executed on silky birch bark of the finest workmanship. The gift is akin to sensational finds during excavations in Novgorod, however, the Siberian birch bark book was created not in ancient times, but today in one of the Old Believer villages on the Lower Yenisei. It turns out that even now they still write on birch bark, and the pioneers brought the tradition of using it for writing to Siberia.

As the readers could see, the cycle “From the History of the Prepress Book” presents the most interesting, in our opinion, information about the materials on which the books were written. I would like to hope that this information will help the teacher in the development of didactic materials for use in the classroom, as well as in extracurricular activities.