So we have come full circle, from scroll to book to blog, for the blog is like an electronic scroll, written not exactly upside down but by adding to the top, not the bottom. Like this comment, which should logically have been placed after the following snippets, which remind me that feuding is not new, and that we make do with the consequences.
“In the second century BC, the king of Egypt learned that King Eumenes II of Pergamum was amassing a library that surpassed the wonderous library of Alexandria. Eumenes had been importing large quantities of papyrus for the books copied and the rivalry caused The Egyptian King to put an embargo on the export of papyrus to Pergamum. Eumenes had his craftsman work to find a substitute and parchment was invented. This rivalry and jealousy between Pergamum and Egypt over the library was settled when Caliph Omar destroyed the Alexandrian library. The tragedy caused Antony to despoil the famous library at Pergamum in the 2nd century BC and remove it to Egypt as a present to Cleopatra to reimburse Alexandria for the volumes destroyed.”
“The introduction of parchment popularized the book in the format familiar to us. Parchment leaves could not be bound end to end like sheets of papyrus except by sewing them together, and the long strip would have been too unwieldy to roll into a volume.”
3 commentaires:
Somewhere I just read about an innovation that occurred two centuries before Gutenberg. With rapid urbanization in the first third of the last millenium farmers who had no such cares on the farm began to wear underwear. They then had to throw away old pairs. This cloth provided a paper much cheaper than parchment and meant more books were produced and there were more readers. We to this day speak of rag countent
Speaking of papyrus. The paper produced from parchment changed the way we read and Gutenburg created a whole new literary galaxy, but there was another inovation a few centuries before that had almost as profound an effect on literacy. Underwear. As peasants moved in from the country a sense of propriety developed and everyone began wearing underwear. These pairs would wear out and were coveted by paper makers. For paper made from rags was much cheaper than parchment. we still speak of the rag count (or content?) of paper
Thanks Terry, that is interesting.
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