Writing and Writing Materials
Ancient writing was done on (
a) leaves, as of the olive and bay; (
b) bark, as of the lime-tree (
φιλύρα); (
c) linen cloth; (
d) clay and pottery; (
e) walls; (
f) metals, rarely gold or silver, often
lead plates and bronze; (
g) wood, either coated with wax or some kind
of glaze or not; (
h) papyrus; (
i) skins,
especially parchment or vellum (
διφθέραι,
membranae). (See the articles
Codex;
Epigraphy;
Fictilé;
Graffiti;
Liber;
Osci;
Palaeography;
Papyrus; Tabula.) Paper was not found in Europe until its use was learned from the
Arabs in the eighth century A.D.
The pen used in writing upon papyrus was a split reed (
calamus), the
best being supplied by Egypt and Cnidus in Caria. The ink (
atramentum）
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Wax Tablet and Stilus. (Perret, Catacombes de Rome. ）
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employed was a preparation resembling India ink, made of soot and gum, or of the
juice of the cuttlefish. Both of these could be erased with a sponge (
spongia), whereas ink made of oxide of iron and gallnuts, which appears to have been
introduced later, and to have been the only kind capable of being used for parchment, left
more or less clear traces behind, even if rubbed out with pumice-stone. Red ink was also used
in very early times. The ink-bottle was called
μελανδόχον,
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Ancient Inkstands.
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atramentarium, and was a small cylindrical jar, or two such jars, one for
black and one for red ink. In ordinary life people used for letters, notices, and despatches,
as also in schools, wooden tablets (
tabellae) with a
raised rim, within which was spread a thin layer of wax. On this the characters were scratched
with the point of a metal or ivory instrument called a
stilus; they could
be effaced with the other end of the instrument, which was bent or flattened out like a
paper-folder (see
Stilus). Two or more such
tablets could be fastened together in the form of a book. (See
Diptychon.) See Thompson,
Greek and Latin Palaeography,
pp. 12-53
(New York, 1893); and the article
Palaeography in this Dictionary.
