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.”
