(bollingen series, 20) c g jung_ beatrice m hinkle-psychology of the unconscious _ a study of the...

8/16/2019 (Bollingen Series, 20) C G Jung_ Beatrice M Hinkle-Psychology of the Unconscious _ a Study of the Transformations…

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The

Evolution

o f

the

Book

Frederick G.

Kilgour

N e w

Y o r k

O x f o r d

Oxfo rd University Press 1998


5/189

O x f o r d

Un ivers i ty Press

O x f o r d New York

At he ns Auc kl a nd Ba ngkok Bogot a Bomba y

Bueno s Aires Calcut ta Cape Town

Dar es

Salaam

Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi

Kuala Lumpur M a d r a s Madrid M e l b o u r n e

Mex ico City Nairo bi Paris Singapore

Taipei Tokyo Tor onto Warsaw

an d

associated companies

in

B erl in I ba d a n

Copyr i ght © 1998 by Fre de r ic k G . Ki l gour

Published

by

O x for d Uni ve r s i t y Pr e s s , I nc .

,

198

M a d i s on Ave nue ,

N ew

Y o r k ,

N ew

Y o r k 1 0 0 1

6

O x f o r d i s a r e g i s t er e d t r a d e ma r k o f O x for d Uni ve r s i t y Pr e s s

All rights reserved. No

part

of this publ icat ion may be

r e p r o d u c e d ,

stored in a

r e t r i e va l s ys t e m,

o r

t r a ns mi t t e d ,

i n a ny fo r m or by any me a ns , e l e c t r on i c , me c ha ni c a l ,

phot oc opyi ng ,

recording, or otherwise,

w i t h o u t

the prior

pe r mi s s i on

o f

O x for d Uni ve r s i t y Pr e s s .

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publicat ion Data

The evolution of the book /

by Fr e d e r i c k

G ,

Kl i gour .

p. cm.

Includes bibl iographical

r e fe r e nc e s a nd i nd e x .

ISBN 0 - 1 9 - 5 - 1 185-9-6

1.

B o o k s

—

History.

I.

Title.

Z

4.K54

0 0 2 ' . 0 9 — D C

2

j

9 7 - 1 4 4 3 0

kilgour freteriex

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Printed in the United States of America

eduacid-free paper

1998


6/189

Fo r

Eleanor

companion

o n th e

journey

with

love,

gratitude,

and

appreciation


7/189


8/189

Contents

1. Dynamics of the B o o k 3

2 . Incunables

o n

Clay

11

3.

Papyr us Ro lls

2 2

4. The

Greco-Roman Wor ld

34

5 . The C o d e x ,

100-700

48

6.

Islam , 622-1300

5 7

7.

W estern Chr is tendom ,

600-1400 68

8. Pr inti ng , 1400-1800

81

9. Po wer Re vo lutio n, 1800-1840 98

10.

Climax

o f

Book s Pr in ted f r o m Cast Type, 1840-1940

114

11.

C o m p u t e r -D r i v e n B o o k P r o d u c ti o n 133

12 .

The Electron ic Bo ok 15 1

N o t e s 161

Ind ex

173


9/189



10/189

The

Evolution

o f

the

B o o k


11/189



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Dynamics

o f t h

B o o k

IN

TH E

LAST

T H I R D of the twentieth century, th e b o o k in the shape o f a long-

familiar object composed

o f

inked sheets folded, cut,

and

bound began

to

metamorphose into the book as a screen display on an electronic machine; the

t r a n s f o r m a t i o n ,

in m aterials, shape, and structure, of the device fo r carrying

writ-

ten and graphic info rm atio n was mo re ex treme than any since the or iginal cre-

ations

o n

clay

and

papyrus

in the

third m il lennium

B.C.

Through

historical analy-

sis

of the

societal needs that have invok ed

th e

t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s

of the

b o o k ,

and the

technologies that have shaped them, The Evolutio n o f th e B o o k aims

to

shed light

on the present emergence o f the electronic boo k.

This

work t reats a

"book"

as a storehouse of hu m an kno wledge intended for dis-

semination

in the f o r m of an artifact

that

is portable—or at

least transportable—

and that contains ar rangem ents of s igns that convey info rm ation . The info rm atio n

m ay

comprise stories, myths,

songs,

and reality; the signs may be representations

o f

hum an speech or gr aphic presentation s o f such things as m aps, musical

notes,

o r

pictures. With respect to portability, a volume of the elephant

folio

of Audubon 's

B irds of

Am erica

and a copy of the Co mprehensive Edi tion o f The Times Atlas o f the

World

might

be

looked upon

as

transportable,

and a

volume

of the

Gutenberg B ible

as

portable, even

if a bit difficult to lug

about .

T he

electronic-book system, when

fully

developed, will need

to be

accessible

by a

device tha t will serve

as a

c o m f o r t-

able

vade

mecum fo r an

ind ividual user .

O v e r

the

last

five

thou sand years there have been

f o u r

t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s

of the

"book" in

which each mani fes ta t ion

has differed f r o m it s

p r e d e c e s s o r s

in

shape

and

s t ructu re .

T he

successive, som etimes ov erlapp ing,

f o r m s

w e r e

the

clay tablet

3

1


13/189

4

The

Evo lution o f

the

B o o k

inscribed

with a stylus

(2500

B . C . — A . D . 100), th e papyrus ro l l wri t ten o n with brush

or pen (2000

B . C . — A . D .

700), th e codex, originally inscribed with pen (A.D. 100),

and the elect ronic book, current ly in the process of innovat ion. There have also

been three

ma jo r

t ransfo rm at ions in method and power appl ica tion in repro-

ducing the codex: machine pr int ing f r o m cast type, powered by human muscle

(1455—1814); nonhuman power dr iving both presses and typecast ing machines

(1814-1970); and computer-dr iven photocomposi t ion combined with offset pr in t -

in g (1970— ). Extre m ely long pe rio ds o f stabili ty characterize the first three shapes

o f

th e book; clay tablets and papyrus-rol l books existed for twenty-five hundred

years , and the codex for near ly two thousand years . An Egyptian of the twent ieth

c e nt u r y

B.C.

wo uld imm ediately have recognized, could

he

have seen

it, a

G r e e k

o r

Roman papyrus- ro l l book

of the

time

o f

Christ; similarly,

a

Greek

o r

Roman l iv-

ing in the second century A.D. who had become familiar with the then new hand-

writ ten codex wo uld have n o t ro uble recognizing o ur machine-pr inted book of the

twentieth century.

The historical pattern of the book, in which long per iods o f s tabi li ty in for m at

al ternate with per iods o f radical change, resembles the pat tern observed in org anic

evolut ion by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in 1972.

1

T o p a r a p h r a s e

Eldredge, punctuated equilibria at i ts simplest entails the recognition of lack

o f

change

and the

realization that patterns

o f

change

in the

fossil

record,

when

they d o occur , are best explained by extinction and change in geographically iso-

lated species. In shor t , the theo ry po stulates

long-term

stability of species (with, at

most , minor modif icat ions) in paleontologic t ime, and punctuat ing bursts of t ime

in which many species were extinguished. I t has been estimated that as many as

four and a

half million species,

or 90

percent

of the

whole, became ext inct

at the

end of the

Paleozoic era;

new

species evolved

f ro m

parental species that escaped

extinction by virtue of their geographic isolation.

2

A

similar

pattern of punctuated equilibria prevails in the evolution of the book.

The

Sum erians invented w ri t ing tow ard

the end of the four th

mil lennium B.C.

and

f ro m their u biqui tou s clay developed th e tablet o n which to inscribe it. The Egyp-

tians soon afterward learned

o f

wri t ing f r o m

th e

Mesopotamians

and

used

the pa-

pyrus plant, which existed only in Egypt , to develop th e papyrus ro l l o n which to

write. Although neither the clay tablet no r the papyr us r o ll changed in

f o r m

dur ing

the next thre e tho usand years, a

significant modification

re lated to bo th boo k fo r ms

did take place in that the num bers o f wri t ing symbo ls were r educed du r ing that pe-

r iod

f ro m

a couple of thousand pictographs to a dozen or so alphabetic characters,

resulting in great increases in the speed of writ ing.

Form

aside, the m a j o r change

throughout

th e

entire history

of the

book

has been in the

continuous increase

in

speed of product ion: f ro m the days required to handwrite a single copy, to the

minutes to

m achine-pr in t

tho usand s of copies , to the seconds to com pose and dis-

play

text on an

elect ro nic screen.

T he

ext inct ion

o f clay

tablets

w as

ensured

by the

difficulty

o f

inscribing curvi-


14/189

Dynamics o f

the

Book 5

l inear

alphabet-like symbols on clay. Papyrus, however, being admirably suited to

cursive

writing

with brush

or

pen, persisted

until the

sixth century A.D., together

with

the

writing tablet (made

of two or

more pieces

of

wood embedded with

wax

and

held

together

with threads

or

thongs), which

had been in

existence

at least

since the fourteenth century B.C. The need to find information more rapidly than

is

possible

in a

papyrus-roll-form book initiated

the

development

of the

Greco-

Roman codex in the second century A.D. Although the codex is still with us, the

one m a j o r change in it having been the replacement of manual writing by machine

printing, the introduction of computer-driven photocomposition and the emer-

gence of the electronic book in the last third of the twentieth century provide the

next

two punctuation points in the

book's history

of alternating

equilibrium

and

change. Figure 1.1 displays these seven punctuations of equilibria.

For each of the major innovations in the f o r m of the book, five concurrent ele-

m e n t s

were necessary:

(1)

societal need

for

information;

(2)

technological knowl-

edge and experience; (3) organizational experience and capability; (4) the capability

Figure

1.1. Seven punctuations of equilibria of the

b o o k

over

fo r ty-f ive

h u n d r e d

years.


15/189

6

The, Evo lution o f

the

B o o k

o f

integrating

a new f o r m

into existing info rm atio n systems;

and (5 )

econo mic via-

bility. T he Sumerians, w ho lived in southern M esopotamia (now roughly the lower

half of Ira q), were the first to create wo rd w rit ing, in 3100 B.C., and the first to pro -

duce textboo ks, in 2900 B.C. Their need to record accounts mo t ivated them, abo ut

3500

B.C., to

invent

an

elementary protowri t ing

fo r

m a r k i ng

o n

spherical

o r oblong

hollow clay balls that contained tokens. During the next

f o ur

centuries they devel-

oped thei r protowri t ing system through pictograph and logogram to the

full

cunei form system of wri t ing on clay tablets . Product ion of books in cuneiform

script

o n clay tablets that we re either sun d ried or kiln baked persisted until the first

century

A.D.

Pictographic wri t ing was almost cer tainly int roduced into

Egypt

f r o m

M e s o -

potamia, and the Egypt ians f i rs t inscr ibed pictographs—later known as hiero-

glyphs—on stone abo ut 3100 B.C.

A

century later ,

and a

century

after th e

S u m e -

rians,

Egyptians had converted their picture

writing

to wo rd wri t ing, and

f ro m

that

t ime

fo rwar d h ieroglyphs were used only

o n

m o n u m e n t s .

Fo r

w ri t ing

o n

papyrus ,

mostly done with a rush brush, there evolved a cursive script known as hieratic.

The need both for administ rat ive records, as in Sumer, and for records to sup-

po r t Eg ypt ian religious life shaped the dev elopm ent of the papyr us-ro l l book. T he

earliest known papyri date

f r o m

a b o u t

2500

B.C. ,

in the

m iddle per iod

of the Old

Kingdom. Their contents encompass descr ipt ions

o f

pr iest ly dut ies

and

cere-

monies,

and

temple documents such

as

income

and

exp end i ture accounts . Subse-

quently the Egyptians produced books containing myths, ta les , and magic, and

such

celebrated works as the Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus, the earliest i l lustrated

book (c. 1980

B.C.);

the R hind M athem atical Papy rus (c. 1700 B.C.); the Ebers Pa-

pyrus, a medical wo rk , and the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyru s (both c. 1600 B.C.);

and the

H a r r i s P a p y r u s

(c.

1 2 5 0

B.C.).

The Greek s adop ted the papy rus ro ll for boo ks so metime befo re the fo ur th cen-

tury B.C.,

th e

date

of the

ear l iest surviving fragments

o f

G r e e k b o o k s .

B y

about

th e eleventh century B.C. the G r e e k s had taken over f r o m th e Phoenicians an

alphabet-l ike consonantal system of writ ing,

f ro m

which

they

constructed the first

com plete alphabet by conver t ing

four

Pho enician conso nants to vowels and ad ding

a

fi f th vowel , thereby w ri t ing each sound individual ly. Although the Gr eeks con-

t inued to employ the papyrus ro l l for books after the invent ion of the codex-form

b o o k ,

by the

fo ur th cen tury A.D. only

a

quar te r

o f

Greek l i terary

and

scientific

texts wer e

o n rolls.

T he c o d e x - f o r m book of the second century w as s t ruc tura l ly th e same as our

present-day bo ok

in

being co mpo sed

o f

leaves bound together between

tw o

cov-

ers. Its

f o r m

der ived

f ro m

th e wo od en w ri t ing tablets that h ad been used fo r fi fteen

hundred years to reco rd impermanent commerc ia l and administ rat ive records,

notes , school exercises ,

and the

dictated

first

dra f t s

o f

b o o k s . C o d e x texts

w e re

t ra ns f e r re d , at

least

at first,

f r o m pap yru s ro l l s.

In

1970

K u r t

W ei tz mann accura te ly

character ized

th is in t ro du ct ion: T he mo st

f unda me nta l

change in the whole his-


16/189

Dynamics of the

B o o k

7

t o ry

of the

book

w as

that

f ro m

rol l

to

codex."

3

A

quarter century later Weitz-

mann's evaluatio n is sti ll accurate, but a quarter century hence i t may n ot be.

Early Christians, l ike their modern counterparts, were a disputatious lot , given

to writ ten and oral debates supported by extensive quotations

f ro m

texts that were

difficult to search o n papyrus rolls. Fo r readier access they used th e technique o f

sewing together gatherings of

folded

sheets of papyrus or parchment and sewing

the

outermost gather ings

to wood,

papyrus ,

o r

leather covers.

In

addition

to

m a k -

in g

parts

o f

text more readily available,

th e

codex

w as

more compact

and

less

costly

to

produce

and

store than

the

papyrus ro l l .

T he

success

of the new f o r m

is revealed by the fact that 158 of 172 kno wn bibl ical manuscr ipts w ri t ten befo re

A.D.

400 are

codices,

and

only

14 are

rolls;

of the 118

Ch ristian non biblical texts

o f

the same period 83 are codices, and only 35 are rolls.

From 400 to 1300, By zantium , Islam, and to a lesser ex tent the C hristian West

preserved and t ransmit ted to Europe the corpus of Greek wri t ings that f i red the

Renaissance. Byzant ium added new knowledge and l i terature. Is lam led the ad-

vance

of the

b o o k

by

making innumerable contr ibut ions, including

the

i m p o r t a -

tion of the Chinese method of making paper, until the

twelfth

century, at which

time

there began

tw o

centuries

o f

decline

in

Islam

and two

centuries

o f

advance

in the West. By the fourteenth century the West was far in the lead of

book

p r o -

duction.

From the fifth century until the twelfth the Chris t ian church dominated cul ture

in the W est, par ticularly in i ts mo nasteries. Saint Bened ict, pro m ulgating his Rule

in the first half of the sixth century, prescribed

f o ur

hours of daily reading, all of

which w as done o ra l ly by selected readers to the rest of the monks . This edict no t

only impelled copying

and

preservation

o f

books

in

monastic l ibraries

but

also

generated scriptoria in which books were copied. The Carolingian revival o f cul-

ture in the

last

half of the eighth century renewed the scholarly activity of inter-

preting biblical texts

and the

texts writ ten

by the

church fathers, generating

a

con-

sequent increase in copying.

The acceleration, st i l l continuing, of the Western demand for information be-

gan in the

eleventh century with

th e

appearance

o f

universities, notably

a

med ical

school at Salerno and a law school at Bologna. To satisfy the r ising number of fac-

ulty and studen t users o f boo ks, station ers associated with universities developed a

prim itive mu ltiple-copy publishing system by lend ing to clients, for a fee, an exem-

plar

(a university-approved copy) for producing personal copies. Tables of con-

tents

and

indexes, which began

to be

a d d e d

to

b o o k s

o f

that t ime, greatly improved

ret r ieval of information

f ro m

within texts , another boon to scholars . Two other

events

fueled

the increasing demand for books—the invention of eyeglasses, at the

end of the thirteenth century, and the development of si lent reading, particularly

a m o n g th e

elite

of the

fourteenth

century. Fo r

f o u r

tho usan d years , reading had

m e a n t read ing aloud and o ne bo ok cou ld be shared with man y lis teners , whereas

silent

re aders needed

a

copy apiece.


17/189

8 The Evolution o f the B o o k

In

the early fifteenth century, wood-block prints depicting saints, and scenes

f r o m the Bible and f r o m legends, began to be produced in Germany and the Nether-

lands

and enjoyed

great popularity with

the

illiterate masses. Later

in the fifteenth

century captions were added to these prints, and by the

14203

there were book-form

sequences composed of block prints, carrying elaborated captions, that outlined the

biblical stories

and

legends. These block books were also extremely popular.

The

technologies that Gutenberg successfully brought

together to

invent print-

ing f r o m cast metal type included metallurgy and the techniques for providing

molds, presses, inks, and paper. Gutenberg's typecasting mold, a success in

itself,

is

still used in some shops today. The wooden screw press had been in use in produc-

ing papyrus and paper for thousands of years before Gutenberg

modi f ied

it in the

fifteenth century to make it a printing press. Paper technology was well-known by

Gutenberg's

time,

but for

printing f r o m type there needed

to be

developed oil-

based inks that would adhere to metal, as the water-based inks previously used by

scribes would not.

Gutenberg was an inventive genius, but he did not possess the entrepreneurial

skill to crown his immeasurably important creation with commercial success; that

was accomplished by Johann Fust, who converted Gutenberg's invention into a

business enterprise that could exist on the revenue it brought in.

Fust,

having fi-

nanced the development of the process of printing f r o m cast type by lending

Gutenberg huge sums

of

money, none

of

which

was left

after Gutenberg

finished

printing his famous Bible, brought a

successful

suit for foreclosure, thereby acquir-

ing Gutenberg's shop, equipment,

tools,

inventory, and supplies. He

successful ly

transformed the moribund printshop into the first m a j o r publishing business. The

publishing of literally millions of copies of books printed f r o m cast type in the last

third of the fifteenth century attests to the volume of society's pent-up demand for

book

information

and the

success

of the

printing press

in

supplying

it.

A

century

and a

half

after

Gutenberg

the

need

for

timely information became

sufficiently

intense to bring newspapers into being. The oldest known newspaper

sheets were printed in the Netherlands in 1605, the first British newspaper appeared

in 1621, and the first Paris weekly began publication in 1631; the Swedish court pa-

per started publication

f o u r t e e n

years later and has continued ever since, making it

the oldest surviving newspaper. In 1665 the first journals appeared: the Journal des

Sfavans,

published in Paris by the Academie des Sciences, and the

Philosophical

Transactions o f th e Royal Society, published

in

London, where

it

still continues.

M a j o r

modifications to the fifteenth-century Gutenberg system of hand compo-

sition of type and printing on a wooden press did not come until the nineteenth

century. In the first year or two of the nineteenth century, Charles,

Third

Earl

Stanhope, invented

the

all-metal press.

A

dozen years later Friedrich Koenig built

the first

steam-powered press

for the Times;

Koenig's invention, which came

to be

known as the flatbed cylinder press, would make eleven hundred impressions an

hour.

In

1846

in the

U n i t e d

States Richard

Hoe

invented

the first

rotary press,


18/189

Dynamics

of the B o o k 9

which could pr int up to two thousand impressions an hour per "feeder." In 1886

O t tmar Mergenthaler p roduced the first really

successful

mechanized composi tor ,

the Lino type linecasting m achine. All

f o ur

inventions were direct responses to so-

cietal pressure for increased speed in the dissemination of information. The twen-

tieth century

has

seen remarkable increases

in

speed

o f

composi t ion

and

printing.

Electronic phototypeset ters , a recent development, can p r o d u c e and compose

36,000,000 characters

a n

h o u r ;

th e

offset press, invented

in

1904,

can now

p r o d u c e

20,000 sheet impression s

an

hour . Dur ing

the

last third

of the

century

offset

print-

ing,

th e

combination

o f

these

tw o

techniques,

has

superseded letterpress printing

f ro m cast metal type.

T he transition

f r o m

th e codex to the presently evolving electronic

book,

the

four t h f o r m

of the book in history, will not happen overnight. With some pre-

ceding forms of the

book,

as will be seen in the early chapters of this history, the

realization of all five elements necessary to effect a transition f ro m an earlier

f o r m — n a m e l y ,

users'

needs, adequate technology, new organizations, successful

integration with existing systems, and cost effectiveness—was a matter of several

centuries. Once operational,

a

system acquires mo men tum,

but its

replacement

o f

th e previo us system is no t im me diate; to take one exam ple, the ro ll-fo rm book per-

sisted

fo r

f o ur

centuries

after

th e

successful

introduction

of the

codex.

It is

doubt-

ful,

therefore , that

th e

electronic

book,

even when widely adopted, wil l immedi-

ately replace th e printed book. It s pr incipa l initial function will be to fulfill existing

societal needs not satisfied by printed

books

and periodicals.

The ever-increasing in fo rm atio na l need s o f society, which have driven the evo-

lution of the book, do no t adm it of clear, simple, detailed analysis, nor have histor i-

cal

analyses been carried out. Indeed, Fritz Machlup's concept

o f a

know ledge

in -

dus t ry

is but a third of a centur y

old.

4

Nevertheless, the larger picture of kno wledge

growth is discernible. Since Aristotle men have been aware that the thought

processes—med itat ion, judgm ent, creat ion,

a nd

invention— require k now ledge

in-

put if they are to be productive. Learning

f r o m

sources beyond

one's

personal ex-

perience requires accumulation of kno wledge provided by others. T he

book,

and its

offspr ing

the periodical , which hold mo re kno wledge than one human m em o ry can

retain, have long served as extensions to h um an mem o ries.

Technological developments

in the

physical

and

biological environment have

enhanced

access

to

informat ion

in

books.

Impro vements

in

storage

o f

b o o k m a t e -

rials have progressed f ro m th e clay-tablet shelves at Ebla of the twenty-second

century B.C.

to the

random-access electronic databases

o f

today. Increases

in

illu-

mination, f rom l ight admit ted only through open doors to l ight admit ted through

windows,

and f r o m

i l lumination provided

by oi l

lamps, candles,

and gaslight to

that provided

by

electricity, have m eant steadily increasing ho urs

fo r

reading.

Auxi l ia ry

m a r k s

and

displays

to facilitate finding

i n f o r m a t i o n

in

text have

ap-

peared,

d isappeared ,

an d

reappeared th rougho ut

the

his to ry

of the book.

N u m b e r -

ing of

columns, sheets,

and

pages

is one of the

m o s t

effective

auxi l ia ry

markings,


19/189

1

The Evo lution o f

the

B o o k

yet

page numbering

did no t

become common unt i l

the

pr inted

book. One o f the

very earliest uses of displays appears in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, in

which the titles and diagnoses of the ma jo r i ty of cases discussed are written in red

ink. A capital letter has long designated the start of a sentence, and it has some-

times been embellished w ith a t ick o f red ink , as in some co pies of the Gu tenberg

Bible. Over

the course of t ime other conventions have been added to the organiza-

tion

o f

texts

to

make them easier

to

use: headings

fo r

chapters

and

sections; signs,

including blank spaces, to signal th e beginnings o f paragraphs and sentences and

the separat ion of words; and punctuat ion marks to clari fy meaning and separate

grammatical structures. Additional helps

to the

user have been tables

o f

contents

and

indexes. Computerized screen display o f text has already created

whole

new

families

o f

aids, some helpful , some annoying (sparing

use o f

color,

f o r

example,

is

helpful to the read er, but an excess can rend er a text almo st unr ead able).

Other

ad -

juncts, including audio signals, such as pronunciation of words in electronic dic-

tionaries, impossible to conceive o f in printing and hand-pro duc ed technologies,

will

sure ly follow.

Like biological evolution, technological evolution is predictable only for very

short periods of t ime, largely because the elements required for successful innova-

tion

are

many

and

complex.

The

Evo lution

o f

the

B o o k

cannot

foretell

i n f o r m a t i o n a l

systems of the twenty-first century except to say that

they

will be supplying in fo r-

mat ion more effectively than the Gutenberg system.


20/189

Incunables

o n

Clay

T H E

URBAN CIVILIZATION

that

led to the invention o f writing began in south-

^—.ern Mesopotamia, in the tr iangle of land, between the Tigris and Euphra tes

Rivers and south o f present-day Baghdad, that came to be k n o w n as Sumer.

There

m en

developed

an

agr icul tural economy dependent

o n

irr igation,

and

there,

by

3400

B .C ., the earliest cities aro se. These cities were the nuclei of city-states in

which citizens initially made the decisions, but subsequent need for leaders

brought about th e establishment o f kingships, one of the pr imary dut ies o f which

w as

to pro tec t the

poor.

T he result was an economic

stratification

f r o m kings to

slaves. T he need to record and

transfer

info rmat ion , a need created largely by the

growth

o f

t rade, administ rat ion,

and

government

in the

city-states, gave rise

to the

invention o f writing and the development of the clay tablet.

In

8500

B.C.

1

the food-gather ing nomads of James Breasted 's Fer t i le Crescent ,

who had moved f ro m campsite to cam psite as the wild plants and an imals that con-

stituted their foo d supp ly dim inishe d, began to do mesticate plants and animals and

to bui ld permanent houses,

often

on former campsi tes . At f i rs t a l l members of

these initial villages were engaged

in

food p r o d u c t i o n

fo r

subsistence,

but as

they

improved their abili ty

to

pro du ce crops, raise livestock,

and

irr igate land, they pro -

duced surplus foo d, f reeing some m em bers of the com mu nity to develop skills for

com m erce, indust ry, social o rganization,

and

ad minist ration,

and to

become priests

and teachers . Increasing agr icul tural

efficiency

cont inued to free grea te r numbers

fo r

such activities, so that by 3000 B.C . there were a half -dozen S umer ian cities

within which almo st no one wa s di rec t ly involved in p r o d u c i n g f o o d f r o m th e land.

A l t h o u g h

the

m a j o r i t y

o f

S um er ian wo rkers remained

o n

f a r m s

(a

c i rcum stance

II


21/189

12 The Evo lution of

the

B o o k

that has persisted thro ugho ut the spread o f civilization and stil l obtains in Iraq, the

twentieth-century M esopo tamia, where in 1980, 5 9 percent of the labor

force

was

in agriculture), much of the new agricultural society had become stratified and

specialized

into administrators, supervisors,

and

workers with various skills other

than farming, and most of them needed to be reimbursed for their productive ac-

tivities. Their reimbursement, chiefly in the f o r m of daily redistribution of food-

stuffs, necessitated the keeping o f ex tensive reco rds o f r eceipts and disburs als. In a

recently

published monograph Denise Schmandt-Besserat has shown that a token

system that was invented to record the essential accounting information was also

th e

precursor

o f

writing.

2

Origin and Development o f Writing

Of the only three ways to convert spoken language into writing, the first and sim-

plest is to draw a picture to r epr esent a wo rd; fo r example, a line draw ing of a man

represents th e

wo rd man. Thousands

o f

these pictograms

are

required

to

record

a significant amount

o f i nfor ma t i on . The

second method

is

syllabic,

in

that

o ne

sign,

o r

several signs

put

together,

can

represent

th e

sound

o f a

word; syllabic

writing requires

at

most only

a few

hundred signs. With

th e

third method, alpha-

betic writing, sounds of words can be assembled f r o m litt le more than a couple of

dozen signs.

Schmandt-Besserat

was the first scholar to discover a creditable origin of writ-

ing.

As she put it, To

recognize that

th e

tokens constituted

an

accounting system

that existed

fo r f ive

thou sand years

in

prehistory

and was

widely used

in the

entire

N e a r

East

was to be my own

cont r ibu t ion .

I was

also able

to

draw paral lels

be-

tween the shapes of the tokens and those of the first incised signs of writing and

establish

th e

continuity between

the two

record ing systems."

3

T he

tokens

to

which

Schmandt-Besserat referred began to be prod uced abo ut 8000 B.C. and wer e pe r-

haps the first

ar tifacts

made of hand-molded clay, and also among the first objects

to be

baked into

a

ceramic material, which resulted

in

their preservat ion. Tokens

were in at least sixteen shapes, including cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, tetrahe-

drons , ovoids, triangles, and rectangles, and most were 1—3 centimeters across.

Later, about 3700 B.C.,

tw o

techniques

f o r

grouping tokens came into existence,

namely,

running

a

st r ing through perforat ions

in

tokens

and

tying them

together,

o r

enclosing tokens

in

clay envelopes. Schm andt-Besserat

has

postulated that these

techniques insured that gro ups

o f

tokens representing

o ne

account were securely

held

together."

The clay envelopes, each measuring 5—7 centimeters in longest di-

mension

and

having

a

cavity

2—4

centimeters wide

and

clay walls

1 . 5 — 2 . 5

centime-

ters thick, were hand -mo lded,

closed,

and

baked, presumably after tokens

had

been

inserted. Their principal d r a w b a c k w as that th e n u m b e r and types o f tokens in a

closed

envelope could not be determined. This shortcoming was soon el iminated

by

impress ing

an

envelope,

befo re

bak ing, with

th e

n u m b e r

o f

images

of the

var i -


22/189


23/189

14

The Evolution

of

the Book

become the lingua f ranca of the ancient Near East and w as being used fo r most, i f

n o t all, diplomatic communication. The so-called Amarna tablets, recovered f r o m

that fourteenth-century Egyptian capital,

had

been written

in

cuneiform Akkadian

by Egyptian royal scribes and their counterparts in other kingdoms.

A s mentioned in the previous chapter, the m a j o r continuing modification in

production o f texts for the past five thousand years h as been increase in speed. Fig-

ure 2.1 reveals three increments in the speed of writing Sumerian. The conversion

f r o m the f reehand drawing shown in the first and second columns to the cuneiform

shown in the fifth column; th e sim plification o f signs

after

2500 B.C. and the reduc-

t ion

f r o m 2,000 to 570, of which only 200 to 300 were in constant use. This reduc-

tion

in the

number

of

signs

a

writer

had to

learn

and

memorize made

the

work

of

th e scribe go

faster.

C u n e i f o r m writing sporadically included signs

and

displays designed

to

assist

in

finding

and understanding content information.

The

beginning

and

ending

of a

text were signaled

by

leaving

the

right-hand edge

of the

tablet blank when

the

f r ont , back, bottom, top, and left-hand edges were all written o n. When the text

only partially filled the tablet, the ending, and hence the beginning, in the upper-

left corner

of the

f r ont , were obvious. Summaries were sometimes added begin-

Figure

2.1. Development

o f

cuneiform

writing. Courtesy

Dr. Albertine

Gaur)


24/189

Inciinables on

Clay 15

ning in the upper- lef t corner of the back, and colophons were at t imes added to

later literary texts. These colophons might contain the first line of the text, always

t reated

as the

title;

the first

line

of the

n ext tablet when

th e

text

was on two o r

m o r e

tablets; sometimes the nam e of the scribe o r o wner; and o ccasionally an attestation

to the

accuracy

and

collation

of the

copy.

Sections, and sometimes sentences, were now and then marked off by l ines

drawn across the tablet

befo re

and

after

the section, or by blank l ines preceding

and following. Sometimes the first sign following a marker or blank l ine was

slightly indented. Another auxiliary marking

o f

text

was the

occasional placing

o f

the figure for the numb er ten at the beginning of every tenth l ine.

Four kinds of auxiliary marks were at t imes used within sentences. A word-

separator ma rk , equivalent to tod ay's blank space, was perhaps the most useful d e-

vice; when emplo yed it certainly mu st have been a godsend to the early decipherers

o f cuneiform text . A name marker often preceded a name— another boon to the

readers. Tw o auxiliary marks that enhanced th e

specificity

o f a sign when placed

b e f o r e o r

after

it were a determinative sign and a phonetic complement. Deter-

minatives indicated the

class

to which an

object

belonged, such as mammals or

birds, m e n o r women, metal o r wood, towns o r cities, and gods. A phonet ic com-

plement

specified

th e

correct pronunciat ion

as

does

th e

st

in

ist edition, which

signals that

th e

pronunciat ion should

be

first.

M uch com munica tion

in

m o d e r n b o o k s

is

no nverbal; m achine designs

and

elec-

tronic circuitry

are but two o f

h u n d r e d s

o f

examples. Ano ther

is

maps, which w ere

the first type o f nonverbal "writing." T he earliest known map, depicting a S ume-

rian estate,

w as

d o n e

in the

last quarter

of the

thi rd mil lennium.

The first

u r b a n

ma p, do ne about 1500 B.C., i s of the M esopotamian city o f Nippur . To co m mu ni-

cate in words th e reality of the i n f o r m a t i o n in this m ap wo uld be impossible. The

visual conception and depiction of a map was the first ma jo r innovation in the

b o o k after the invention of writ ing.

O ne

immediate result

of the

invention

o f

writ ing

w as

training

in

writing

and

reading (in the ear ly centur ies undo ubtedly by the apprenticeship system), the ear-

liest evidence of instruction being lists of words on clay tablets

f ro m

about 3000

B.C. For the

next

five

hundred years

th e

development

o f

schools, each called

a

tablet ho use in Su m er ian, was slow, as was that o f wr iting itself; ne verthe-

less, pedagogical treatises had come into being by

2500

B.C., and du ring the secon d

half

of the

third millennium schools

had

developed

a

regularized system

o f

teach-

ing. The chief objective of the schools was the prepara t ion o f boys to become

"scribes," to use the designation Sumerians gave their administrators; an analogy

might be made to the colleges established in colonial America to t rain young m en

fo r the ministry. There were, it might be noted, only a few contempo rary mentions

o f women scribes. Cities, even the

earliest

ones , needed adm inis t ra to r s who could

read and

w r i t e

in

o r d e r

to

mainta in reco rds

o f

income, ex pendi tures , equipmen t ,

bui ldings

and

thei r ma intenan ce, taxes,

and

const ruct ion. Scr ibes,

a nd

s tudents

in


25/189

16 The

Evolution o f

the

B o o k

prepara t ion

to

becom e scribes, belonged

to the

elite

o f

Sumerian society;

an

analy-

sis of the

parents

o f

s o m e

five

hundred scr ibes revealed that

th e

fa thers

o f

students

were

governors,

priests, managers, supervisors, accountants,

and

archivists.

7

Clay- Tablet

System

T he

m a j o r

components of the clay-tablet system, which was mature by 2 50 0 B.C.,

were manual writing, clay technology,

and the

organization

o f

collections

o f

tablets, all of which r equired centuries for de velop m ent. The clay tablet possessed

an advantage

in its

ease

o f

use,

for i t

would

lie firm on a flat

surface

o r

could

be

held in one hand, unl ike the later papyrus ro l l o r even some present-day pr inted

b o o k s .

Sume r was devoid of wood and s tone, and i ts only mineral was clay, renewed

annually,

together with silt, by the f lood ing—somet imes disast rous—of the Eu-

phrates and the Tigris. This alluvial clay wa s fine grained and re quired tempe ring

with var iou s materials, including chaff f rom the threshing floor, before i t could be

f o r m e d in molds. The resultant bricks, which were being produced wel l before

3500

B.C., have proved rem ark ably perm anent . Seton Lloy d

has

stated that The

raw material that ep itom ized Meso po tam ian civilization was clay: in the almo st ex-

clusively

mud-brick architecture and in the number and variety of clay figurines

and pottery artifacts, Mesopotamia bears the stamp of clay as does no other civi-

lization;

and no wh ere in the world but in M esopo tamia and the regions over which

it s influence w as diffused w as clay used as the vehicle o f writing."

8

Little is known of the exact procedures the Sumerians used to process clay for

wr it ing tablets, but technical analyses o f ancient po tt ing m etho ds

suggest

that their

procedures were essentially

th e

same

as

those

o f

people

in the

M i d d l e

Ages and o f

primitive peoples today.

Thus,

one may surmise that the Sumerians repeatedly

wash ed clay w ith water, allow ed it to settle in a vat, then strained it to o btain a fine-

grained clay. The tablet

f o r m e d

f ro m i t was wri t ten o n while dam p and then d r ied,

usually in the sun but som etimes by being bak ed in a kiln. These drying and baking

processes endowed a tablet with exceptional durabili ty, as witnessed by the exis-

tence in m u s e u m s of an estimated half a m ill ion o r m or e tablets and fragments .

The Sum erians contr ived with a store of perhaps several thousan d tablets what

has come to be known as an archive because of the preponderance of administ ra-

tive

record s—by some estimates as much as 95 perce nt— that i t co ntained. For the

most part such archives have been unearthed

f ro m

palaces and temples, but some

have even been f o und in residences. As the accum ulatio n of clay tablets grew into

the tens of thou sand s in the second half of the third m illennium B.C., the last m a j o r

component of the clay-tablet system, organized

collections

of tablets, came into

being.

T he bes t -documented a rchive , th e Royal Archive at Ebla, in nor thern S yr ia ,

contained fifteen

thousand

tablets

and

f ra gme nts

wri t ten

in the

Eblai te langua ge


26/189

Incunables on Clay

17

using cune ifor m signs. T he archive room, measuring only 5 .10 by 3 . 5 5 meters, w as

housed

in a

st ructur e designated

as

Royal Palace

G ,

which

w as

destroyed

by fire

about 2 2 5 0 B.C.

T he

tablets

had

been stored

o n

three wo o den shelves, each

0.8 me-

ters deep, o n three sides of the ro o m. The vertical distance between shelves was

half a meter. Gio vanni Pettinato, th e epigrapher at Ebla, ascertained that th e area

o f

the no rth w all co ntained texts of a lexical charac ter, while the east sector was re-

served for the tablets o f a commercial nature. It seems, therefore, that th e scribes

had

ordered th e material also, an d perhaps chiefly, o n a basis o f conten t ... a

fact

o f

considerable importance

fo r

libr ar y science.

9

Indeed

it

was,

fo r

such

shelv-

ing of

l ibrary m ater ials und er bro ad subjects persisted unti l

th e

last years

of the

nineteenth century.

Another collection

o f

M esop o tamian tablets , found

in a

late-third-

and

early-

second-mil lennium B.C. residential quarter

of Ur , has

yielded impo r tan t in form a-

t ion about foreign t rading; one recorded event is of Mesopotamian

goods

having

been t ransported

to

Bahrain, where they were exchanged

fo r

copper

and

ivory.

Seven

more archives

are

k n o w n

in

addition

to

those

in

Ebla

and Ur, f ive of

which

were located

in

temples

and two in

palaces.

Their

approximate dates

range

f ro m

c.

2000 B.C.,

for the

collection

in the

Enlil temple

in

Nippur ,

to 612

B.C., when

th e

Ashurbanipal

archive of some twenty thousand tablets and fragments, the greatest

collection of

all,

w as

sacked.

A t

least

fifteen

lists

o f

tablets, which co ntain altogether m o re than

a

h u n d r e d

ti -

tles

o f

l i terary wo rks, have been recovered

and

analyzed. Altho ugh

th e

purposes

o f

th e lists have no t been d eter m ined , it has been suggested that they may be catalogs

o f

collections.

No one has

been able

to

detect

a

principle that guided

th e

organiza-

tion of the ti t les within the lists. The most that Samuel Noah Kramer could say

abo ut these lists wa s that they w ere prepared by the O ld Baby lonian m en of let-

ters, that

is ,

lists

o f

incipits compiled

by

them

fo r one

reason

o r

another ,

and

arranged in accordance with a varied assortment of scribal procedures."

10

There is

little eviden ce

of the

ex istence

o f

windows

in

M esopo tamian build ings

that wo uld have admitted

sufficient

light

to

p e r m i t

the

reading

o f

tablets; w here win-

d o w s

d id

exist they were high

in the

w alls

a nd

usually small. Flo or plans

o f

palaces

and

temples reveal that perh aps half the tablet roo ms opened through a do or way

onto

a sunlit area, while the othe r half opened into a sunlit ro o m . Pr o bab ly tablets

wer e taken into d irect daylight

f o r

use.

Cuneiform Texts

T he

earliest known Sumerian texts

are

word lists f ro m 2900 B.C.

and

pr im ers p re-

pared for

schools abo ut

25 00 B.C. T he

p r i m e r s

are

similar

to the

small

schoolbooks

used

in

teaching m o der n e lementary-schoo l ch i ld ren ,

but in the

m i d d le

o f the

third

millennium they encompassed much that

w as

t he n k n o w n . L i t e r a r y mater ials

in-

cluded

myths, epic tales, lame ntat ions , hymns, incantat ion s,

an d

collections

of

say-


27/189

18 The Evolution

of the

Book

ings, proverbs, fables, and essays. Among the several thousand

recovered

tablets

and tablet fragments o f these literary documents are a significant number copied

by students. A n early specimen, a copy of the Enlil myth, is dated about 2400 B.C.,

an

era

f r om

which only a few literary texts have been recovered. Among them the

epic tale of the hero Gilgamesh is certainly the best known; its popularity persists,

fo r at

least sixteen editions have appeared

in the

twentieth century.

The

literary

genre also included grammars

and

dictionaries. Most

of the

known Sumerian liter-

ary

works,

o n

some

five

thousand tablets

and

fragments,

are in

poetic f o r m

and

were written between 2100 a nd 1800 B.C.

11

Mathematical texts of the early period were arithmetics, of great practical value

to

students training

to

become administrators

and to

officials

who

would have

had

to

produce

and

manipulate counts

of

such things

as

taxes, supplies,

and

provisions

fo r

trade; reckon payment o f wages and time

worked,

calendar time, land areas,

w a t e r

amounts, and equipment; and keep track o f workers, soldiers, and fellow o f-

ficials. The

Sumerian mixed decimal-sexagesimal counting system remains some-

thing o f a puzzle.

George

Sarton, the eminent historian o f science and himself a

mathematician, writing

in the

m id—twentieth century, observed that

"to

appreciate

their genius it will suffice to recall that the extension of the same ideas to the deci-

m al

system

was

only conceived

in

1 5 8 5

. . . ,

that

its

implementation

was

begun

only during

the

French Revolution,

and is not yet

completed today."

12

Meso-

potamians also invented and developed algebraic operations and could solve

simple quadratic equations

by the

time

o f

Hammurabi (ruled 1792—1750

B.C.), but

their mathematics

is

known only f r o m fewer than

a

hundred tablets

and

fragments,

no full treatise having yet been discovered.

Scientific

texts consisted largely

of

topics

in

natural history that were little more

than classed lists

of

mammals, birds, insects, trees, plants, rocks, stones,

and

miner-

als.

In

addition there were lists

of

villages, cities, city-states,

and

countries outside

M esopotam ia . There

were also lists of stars and planets. In the Old Babylonian pe-

riod, astronomers

had

distinguished among

the

stars, moon,

and

planets

and had

compiled lengthy tables

o f

positions

o f

Venus including dates

o f

last appearance

at

sunset

and first at

sunrise.

To

make such observations

it

was,

of

course, necessary

to have a calendar, and well before the end of the third millennium the Mesopo-

tamians had

devised

a

lunar calendar, which required intercalation

of an

extra

month every eight years

to

keep

the

lunar

and

solar cycles synchronized.

These

texts were not scientific in the modern sense, since they did not seek the regulari-

ties that underlie

the

appearance

of

nature—it

was the

Greeks

who

later invented

that basic concept

of

science—but

the

Sumerians recorded

and

contributed many

o f

the

observations that

the

Greeks incorporated into their

new

science.

Perhaps

th e

earliest medical work

is a

text

o f a

dozen medical recipes written

a b o u t 2100 B.C. I t says nothing about the ailments that the concoctions were to treat,

no r

does

it

contain

any

mention

o f

incantations, magic, demons,

o r

gods,

all of

w hich played

a

m a j o r

role

in

M e s o p o t a m i an

and

other primitive medical systems.


28/189

Incunables

on

Clay

19

By 2400 B.C . texts

o f

politics, history,

and

l i terature

h ad

appeared.

A

po litical

work written by an archivist describes how a new ruler of the city of Lagash had

established

th e

f r ee d o m

of i ts

citizenry ,

a

r e f o r m achieved

by

rest raining

the bu-

reaucratic scribes,

who had

invented taxes

o n

just about everything that

was in

sight, and on

some things, such

as

divorce, that were not ,

and who

also made

th e

r o u n d s

to

co llect them.

T he r e f o rm

went

fur ther , fo r

m en

o f power"

were also

re-

strained f ro m exploiting the

poor.

13

O ne

historical text, which covers

tw o

centuries, recounts

the

troubles that

o c-

curred over the establishment of a boundary ditch between the city of Lagash and

its

northern neighbor ,

th e

city

o f

U m m a .

T he

original dispute, which arose about

2600

B.C. ,

w as

settled

in

favor

o f

Lagash,

but

s o o n

af terward

U m m a in v ad e d

La-

gash

and

took over

th e

ditch together with some

o f

Lagash 's nor thern ter r i tory.

T w o

generations later Lagash attacked

and defeated

Umma, res to red

th e

original

boundary d i tch ,

and

recovered

the

t e r r i t o r y

it had

lost.

After

another generat ion

had passed, Umma invaded Lagash's reclaimed terr i tory, only to be disast rously

defeated by Lagash and dr iven back to i ts ow n borders. Soon thereafter the city of

Zablam, to the nor th , conquered Umma and

reignited

the boundary dispute by

withholding water

f r o m the

bo undary d itch

and refusing to pay the

revenues that

Lagash

had

demanded

f r o m

U m m a .

This

time

a

solution

w as

arr ived

at by

c o m -

prom ise ra ther than

b y a

m il itary

clash.

14

Texts

o f

myths also

first

appear about 2400 B.C.,

one of the

earliest being

an

Enlil

m yth. Enlil,

the air god w ho

presided over

th e

Sumer ian pantheon

o f

gods

fo r

a thousand years beginning about

2500

B.C.,

w as

held

to

have created

th e

concept

of universal laws ruling all existence and to have invented the pickax, a basic tool

o f Sum erian farm ing, thereby dem o nstrat ing a n ear ly Sumer ian capacity f o r philo-

sophical thought

and

pract ical accom plishment. A no ther l i terary f o r m ,

the

lament,

appea ring at about the same time as the m yths, po etically deplo red the destruction

and

loo ting of tem ples and other structure s in the city o f Lagash. It was the

begin-

ning

o f a m a j o r

category

o f

Sumerian l iterature that

flour ished on the

seemingly

constant internecine

strife

among the Sumerian city-states.

The ear l iest known legal text is the Ur-Nammu law code, proclaimed by a

Sumerian

king sometime

after

he

became

th e

ru ler about

205 0

B.C. Rules

o f

con-

duct and rights had long been proclaim ed by chiefs and rulers, but the U r - N a m m u

code appears to have been the first to set down such rules in writing. The tablet

contains

an

un k n o w n n u m b e r

o f

laws,

o f

which only

five are

sufficiently decipher-

able

to be at least partially under stoo d. The next k no w n code is that of King L ipit-

Ishtar, dated about 1900 B.C., thirty-seven laws o f which have been deciphered in

whole o r in part . What the to tal num ber o f laws may have been is not k now n, but

their principle of protecting the

economically weak

f r o m being

overpowered

by

th e strong w as

clear ly stated: The o rph an

did no t fall a

prey

to the

wealthy;

th e

w i d o w

did not

fall

a

p r e y

to the

pow erful ;

the man of one

shekel

did no t

fall

a

prey

to the man of one mina.

1 5

(A mina was equal to sixty

shekels.)

A century and a


29/189

2 The

Evolution

o f

the Booh

half later Hammurabi promulgated

his

celebrated Code, which contained nearly

three hundred provisions dealing with such topics as commercial, criminal, and

civil

law; it is inscribed on an eight-foot-tall slab o f stone, however, no t on a clay

tablet.

The

Ashurbanipal

Library

The

history

of

clay tablets culminates with

the

famous library

of

Ashurbanipal,

the last of the p o w e r f u l kings o f Assyria and the most learned, w ho reigned f r o m

668 to 6 27 B.C. at Nineveh. T he f a m e of his library rests on its huge size (nearly

twenty thousand tablets and fragments are in the British Museum) and on i ts hav-

ing been the first to be organized by topic. Ashurbanipal acquired in his youth a

thorough knowledge o f priestly an d scribal learning and knew th e Sumerian and

Akkadian languages

and

their scripts.

He

brought together collections

of his

pre-

decessors f r o m their neighboring palaces

at

Ashur, Calah,

and

Nineveh itself,

and

a dde d to them a multitude o f texts that his scribes searched out and copied f r om

temple collections. Five m a j o r groups were (1) lexicographical texts listing Sume-

r ian,

Akkadian, and other words; (2) incantations, prayers, wisdom sayings, and

fables;

(3) omen texts based on al l manner o f observations and correlations,

rang-

ing f r o m heavenly bodies to men's features and events; (4) mathematical and scien-

tific texts;

and (5) the

ancient epics. Indeed,

the

Ashurbanipal library

is our m a j o r

source of the Sumerian epics of tw o thousand years earlier. A decade and a half af-

ter Ashurbanipal's death, invading Medes

f r o m

Persia besieged, captured, an d

sacked Nineveh. It was probably at that time that

fire

destroyed the palace contain-

ing the library, which soon became forgotten and so remained until British excava-

tors

uncovered

it in the

middle

of the

nineteenth century.

The

discovery revealed that

the

library contained

a

wealth

of

Mesopotamian

knowledge that

was

basic

to f u t u re

transitions

of the

book.

For

example, their clay

tablets contained information concerning the technical activity o f glassmaking,

im po r tant in the evolution of the book in respect to both the materials used and the

resul tant

products. The latter ultimately included clear glass (ancient glass was

co lo red and ornamental) suitable fo r eyeglasses, which enabled persons of im -

paired vision to read. There are some three dozen tablets and fragments con-

cerning glassmaking,

all but

three

of

them

f r o m

the

Ashurbanipal archive.

They

contain descriptions

of

tools, ingredients,

and

production,

but not

precise recipes

o r instructions. Accurate information about th e materials that went into Meso-

p o t a m i a n glass conies f r om a relatively few glass objects.

16

That

lead and anti-

mony were among the ingredients is of interest because o f their subsequent inclu-

sion in Gutenberg's type met a l . Lead antimonate, which contains both elements, is

a yellow pigment that has long been used in glassmaking. M e s o p o t a m i a n glass-

m a k e r s

also used antimony oxide to par t ial ly decolorize glass and to remove bub-

bles. By

1000 B.C.

M e s o p o t a m ia n

glassmakers

h ad

discovered that

th e

addition

o f


30/189

Incunables on Clay 21

fai rly large amounts of lead reduced shrinkage of glass on cooling, thereby pre-

venting the glass f r o m cracking when it was used as a glaze. Antimony was also

available

in pure f o r m ; a few objects containing pure antimony have been found.

Pure lead and pigs of lead were being imported f r o m Cappadocia, in eastern Asia

Minor, by 2000 B.C. Pure tin (the third ingredient in type metal) was available by

1500

B.C.

End o f the Clay- Tablet

System

The clay-tablet book was technologically mature by the middle of the third mil-

lennium

B.C.

and

enjoyed

a

technical stability without change

f o r tw o a nd a

half

millennia.

The decline of c u n e i f o r m clay tablets began with the introduction of

West Semitic alphabet-like syllabaries

in the

second millennium B.C. Although

bulky,

they were a vast improvement over the previous cuneiform and hieratic sys-

tems with

their

many hundreds of symbols. By 1100 B.C. the Greeks had taken

over the Phoenician alphabet of

twenty-two

characters in script and

modif ied

it by

converting

f o u r

consonants to vowels and adding five new characters, one of them

a

vowel,

to

improve

its

efficiency

and

accuracy

fo r

writing

a

non-Semitic language.

The two

dozen

or so

characters could

be

learned much more rapidly than

six

hun-

d red or so signs, and alphabetic writing could be done far more speedily than

c u n e i f o r m .

Furthermore, since

it was difficult to

render curved lines

o n

moist clay,

as

was noted earlier with respect to pictographic writing, papyrus, as a far more

suitable mater ia l

on which to draw curvilinear alphabetic

writing,

began to replace

clay

by the

sixth century B.C.

By the

second century A.D.

th e

clay tablet

was the

first f o r m of the

book

to

have become extinct.

At the

present time, mention

of

evolutionary extinction immediately calls

to

m ind

mass extinctions such as the one of immense proportions (90 percent of all

species was wiped out) during the Permian Period, at the end of the Paleozoic Era,

225 million years ago,

and the

extinction

at the end of the

Cretaceous Period,

65

million years ago, that destroyed

the

dinosaurs. "But there

is

also 'background

ex-

tinction,'" as

Eldredge

has

termed

it, "in

which species drop

by the

wayside unac-

companied."

17

It is the latter type of extinction that the clay-tablet book experi-

enced, and that we will witness again in subsequent chapters of this book.


31/189

3

Papyrus

Rol l s

S O M E T I M E A R O U N D 3 10 0 B . C . K in g N a r m e r a ls o k n o w n a s M e n e s u n ite d th e

k ingdom s o f Upper and L o wer E gypt and became th e f irst king o f the F irst

Dynasty.

It was

also

at

this time that

th e

earliest known Egyptian writ ing

w as

done; the pictographs on the oft - reproduced s late Palet te of Narmer provide one

example. Narmer 's dynasty and the dynasty that fo l lowed, which began about

2900

B.C. and lasted fo r ano ther tw o hundred years , comprised th e Early Dynas-

t ic Per iod .

Thirty

more dynasties followed, with the last , the Ptolemaic, ending in

30 B.C.

Egyptian chrono logy

has

suffered,

and

still

suffers, f r o m wand er ing dates gener-

ated by various chronological schemes adopted at various t imes. Flinders Petrie 's

design

o f

sequence dating, long useful

for the

study

o f

Egyptian prehistory,

w as

predicated

on the

assumption that absolute dating

w as

impossible, which

w as

cer-

tainly

the case in

1901,

when Petrie put for th his proposal. In recent decades, how-

ever , car bo n-i4 dat ing has pro duced prehistor ic dates within usefully n arro w l imits;

although they have replaced

Pet r ie ' s

chronology, there

are

natural ly some older

mo no graph s sti ll being rep rinted tha t con tain his sequence dates. Fur ther co nfusio n

arises as dynastic da tes have been, and are sti ll being, ch anged as kn o wledge of an-

cient Egyp t expand s.

Ancient

Egypt , like M esop otam ia, w as r iver dependent , the flow o f the Nile f o r

the 750 m iles f r o m the first cataract a t Aswan nor th to the M e d i t er r a n e a n Sea p r o -

viding

its n o u r i s h m e n t . M e a sur ing south f r o m Aswan to the Ni le ' s sources in

Ethiopia and U g a n d a th e r e ar e

near ly

3,400 miles m o re of f lowing water , mak ing

the

Nile

the longest r ive r in the wo rld. In An cient Egy ptian t imes the r iver

emp-


32/189

Papyrus Ro l ls

23

tied

into

the sea

through

a

150-mile-long delta

and had

seven mouths; there

are

now only two. The marshy, flat area of the delta is Lower Egypt; the 6oo-mile val-

ley to the south, Upper Egypt.

The

basis

of the

Egyptian econo my

w as

agr iculture,

in

which most

of the

labor

force w as

engaged

and

which still employs two-fifths

o f

modern Egypt ian

w o r k -

ers. Life on the fa rm was not easy, at least as it was described with prejudice b y a

gloating

scribe:

I am told yo u have aband oned wr i t ing and taken to sport , that you have set your face

t owards

w o r k in the fields and

turned your back upon letters. R e m e m b e r

you no t

th e co ndi tion of the cultivator faced with th e r egistering of the harvest-tax, w hen th e

snake has carried off hal f the corn and the hippopo tamus has devoured the rest? The

mice abound

in the fields. The

locusts descend.

T he

cattle devour.

T he

sparrows bring

disaster upo n the cultivator. Th e re m aind er that is on the threshing floor is at an end, it

falls to the

thieves.

The

value

of the

hired c att le

is

lost.

And now the

scribe lands

on the

r iver bank

and is

about

to

register

th e

harvest tax.

The

janitors carry staves

and

th e N ubians rods o f palm, and they say Hand over th e corn" though there is none.

The cultivator is beaten all over, he is bo und and thro wn into the well, soused and

dipped head downwards. His wife has been bo und in his presence, his children are in

fetters. His neighbours abandon them and are fled. So their corn fl ies away. But the

scribe

is

ahead

o f

everyone.

He who

w o r k s

in

writing

is not

taxed,

he has no

dues

to

pay. M ark i t well .

1

Mesopotamian influences,

as

exemplified

by

artistic mo tifs, styles,

and

artifacts,

ma d e an apparently sudden appearance in Egypt in the late Predynastic Period in

th e f o r m o f

cylinder seals, recessed panels

o f

brick construction

fo r

m o n u me n t al

buildings, scalloped battle-axes,

and

ships.

Three

cylinder seals

o f

M esopotamian

ma nufa c t u r e

have been

found in

Egypt,

one of

them

in a

Predynastic grave;

Egyptians took

up

their

use and

continued

to

make them

fo r the

next

fifteen

hun-

dr ed years. Representations of bizarre creatures, M esop o tamian in concept, also

appeared.

G r o w t h o f royal administrat ion both befo re and after th e un ification o f U p p e r

and

Lower Egypt yielded an inordinate complexity of bureaucratic activities that

required ever more writ ing of records. Numbers of public works and courts of

justice multiplied,

(bollingen series, 20) c g jung_ beatrice m hinkle-psychology of the unconscious _ a study of the...

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