Pen.
1. Pens, if the term be held to include all writing instruments, are of two general kinds, those which scratch and those which use an ink. The former are the more ancient, and consisted of a stylus or bodkin made of bone or metal, and employed upon a leaf, a waxed tablet, a sheet of lead, a stone slab, etc.
The instrument by which an ink or pigment is applied consists of a pen or a brush.
The pen was made forty centuries since of a reed (
calamus), which held almost undisputed sway till the sixth century A. D., when the quill (
penna) came into use. The materials on which the pen was used were bark, leaves (especially palm), linen, papyrus, skins, parchment, and eventually paper.
Job, chap.
XIX., seems to refer to the above-cited modes of writing.
It is rendered in our version:—
Printed [inscribed] in a book.
Graven with an iron pen and lead.
Pliny remarks: “At first men wrote upon palmleaves and afterward on the bark or rind of trees.”
The Latin words
volumen, a scroll,
folio, a leaf,
liber, the inner bark, a book, are preserved in our language, indicating the form and the character of the material on which the writings of our distant predecessors were executed.
Writing on pieces of palm-leaves was a very ancient practice, and the Cingalese retain it to the present day. Oblong pieces are cut from the large leaf of the tree, and, being made of a uniform size, are neatly strung together with a cord.
Many museums and libraries contain Hindoo, Burmese, and Cingalese books of this kind.
The mode of writing upon these leaves was by a sharp instrument, a
stylus. The point scratched through the external cellular matter, which shrank away from the incision, leaving a shallow groove which was made more plain by rubbing a black pigment into the lines so made.
We learn from
Pausanias, a Greek topographical writer who flourished in the second century of our era, that the “Works and days” of Hesiod, inscribed on
leaden plates, were preserved at the fountain of
Helicon in Boeotia down to his time, but were partly obliterated by the effects of wear and time.
Hesiod lived about 900 B. C., but how long the plates had been engraved is another matter.
Pliny mentions sheets of
lead and
tablets, and refers to their use in the remote past.
The
Romans also used ivory tablets named
libri eborci or
libri elephantini, and Ulpian states that the transactions of the great were usually in a black color on ivory.
A number of engraved bronze tablets of
Rome and
Carthage are now in the British Museum. Eight bronze tablets were found in a subterraneous cabinet at
Gubbio, Italy, in 1444. Seven of them bore inscriptions in Latin and one in Etruscan.
The civil, criminal, and ceremonial laws of the Greeks were engraved on bronze tables.
The speech of
Claudius, on the same alloy, is preserved in the town hall of
Lyons, France.
The pacts between the Romans, Spartans, and Jews were written on brass.
In many cabinets in
Europe are discharges of Roman soldiers
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written on copper plates.
The laws of the twelve tables at
Rome were inscribed on oaken boards; then transcribed on ivory tablets and hung up
pro rostris, that they night be read by the whole people; after approval, they were permanently engraved on bronze and deposited in the
Capitol, where a large collection was melted upon the occasion of the conflagration occasioned by that edifice being struck by lightning.
The
Cretans also used bronze records.
Among the ancient inscriptions on bronze yet extant are the “
Scriptum de Bacchanalibus,” Imperial Library; Trajan's “Tabula Alimentaria” ; the helmet found at
Cannae with Punic letters, in the museum at
Florence, and various others in the
Italian museums, containing inscriptions in Etruscan and Latin.
A deed for land, engraved on copper in Sanscrit characters and bearing date about 100 B. C., was dug up at Mongheer in Bengal.
The grantor was a Bideram Gunt.
Pliny informs us that such documents were rolled up like a cylinder.
Two letters are still preserved which passed between
Pope Leo III.
and Luitbrand, king of the Longobards.
Montfaucon notices an ancient book composed of eight leaves of lead, the outside two forming the cover, and the whole held together by a leaden rod passing through rings at the back of the plates.
The book contained mysterious figures of the Basilideans, together with words in the Greek and Etruscan characters.
The writing of the ancient
Assyrians was impressed by knives or stamps upon cylinders or prisms of soft clay very carefully compounded and shaped.
Some of these are rough, others polished or glazed.
The writing is the cuneiform, the letters one eighth of an inch long.
The cylinders of carnelian, chalcedony, etc., were engraved seals by which the terra-cotta records were verified.
See seal.
The use of wooden tablets covered with wax is closely allied to that of sheet-lead and a pointed stylus, but the product is of a more ephemeral character.
The practice was very common in business and friendly correspondence, and also in official matters which did not require to be laid up for record.
Such, for instance, is believed to have been the tablet presented by the
Roman legate
Popilius to
Antiochus Epiphanes, ordering him to evacuate
Egypt, which he did, as prophesied by
Daniel 366 years previously (Daniel XI. 29, 30).
“Make it plain upon tables, that he may run who readeth it” (Habakkuk II. 2). An allusion to the old system of relay couriers.
Not “that he who runs may read,” as often said.
The tables referred to by Isaiah and Habakkuk may have been of wood.
The civil laws of
Solon were recorded on wood, and placed in a machine constructed to turn easily, and called
axones; such boards were called by the Greeks
schedoe or
schedulae; when covered with wax,
pugillares cerei. Pliny and other writers refer to the custom.
When a number of such boards constituted a series of leaves, they were described as
cera prima, cera secunda, tertia, etc.
Tabuloe and
ceroe are terms used by the ancient jurists as describing written statements and records.
See also book.
The reporters who wrote down the speeches in the forum preferred writing on waxed tablets, which required but a scratch of the stylus.
No speed could have been effected with a brush and paint in following the
Roman orators.
In the Abbott collection of
Egyptian antiquities, now in the possession of the New York Historical Society, are a number of these tablets, made like our school slates and used for the same purpose.
The middle portion was sunken to protect the writing, which was executed by a sharp bronze stylus upon a coating of black wax spread over the depressed surface.
The latter was on both sides like our slates.
The specimens were obtained from Abouseer, along with tee-to-tums, dolls, toys, and other evidences that the amusements of the children in the times of the Pharaohs were much like the modern.
Two ancient waxen tablets were discovered a few years since in gold-mines near and in Abrudbanya, in
Transylvania.
Each consisted of three tablets with raised margins (like a school state) to protect the wax surface.
The sections folded on each other; the middle one had two waxen surfaces; the outer ones but one each, on the inside.
The
Latin writing on one set of tablets was still visible, and was a copy of a document whose date determined it to be of A. D. 169.
The inscription on the inner tablet was in
Greek and nearly illegible.
For important purposes, such tablets were carefully inscribed and fastened consecutively by a cord; or for letters, the boards were covered with a linen cloth.
In
Hanover and
Geneva schedules of this kind are yet preserved.
Leaves were also very generally employed in the early stages of society, and with some previous preparation are still in common use in the
East.
In the
University of Gottingen is still preserved a Bible containing 5,376 pieces of leaf, formed into 45 sheets.
A large number of such books, principally Asiatic, are found in various museums.
The
Syracusians and
Athenians used olive-leaves for writing sentences of banishment upon,--a mode of punishment inflicted upon public men under a cloud in those turbulent republics.
The
Balinese, the inhabitants of Bali, an island of the
Malay Archipelago, write with a steel point on the
lanter-leaf.
The sacred books of the Brahmins and Buddhists are written on leaves of the talipat palm (
talipoin, a priest), which is a mammoth variety, growing as much as 200 feet high and 4 feet in diameter.
The sacred fans of the Buddhists are made of its leaves.
It lives to the age of a century and blossoms but once.
The bloom is thirty feet in length, and at maturity explodes and scatters its seed.
Sir Hans Sloane's museum had more than 20 manuscripts of palm-leaves written in different Asiatic languages.
To leaves succeeded the
liber, or inner bark of trees; this was united together so as to form a continuous roll,
volumen, upon which the matter was written.
Skins of animals, parchment, fish-skins, and bones have been used, as existing specimens testify.
Puricelli mentions a grant by the
Italian kings Hugo and
Lotharis to the
Ambrosian church of
Milan written on the skin of a fish.
In the history of Mahomet it is recorded that his disciples wrote parts of the Koran on the shoulderblades of sheep, which they strung together.
Arab poetry was not unfrequently inscribed on these
scapuloe, probably trimmed for the purpose.
The Alexandrian Library contained the works of
Homer written in golden letters on the skins of animals; and the Iliad and Odyssey, written in golden letters on the entrails of animals, collectively 120 feet long, were extant at
Constantinople in the reign of the Emperor Basileus.
Other instances are known of the use of entrails for this purpose.
Before papyrus became common, the Ionians used instead the skins of sheep and goats, “on which material,” says
Herodotus, “the barbarians are even now wont to write.”
Ctesias says he obtained the matter for his Persian history “from the royal parchments” or skins.
The invention of parchment is, however, ascribed to
Eumenes, king of
Pergamos, about 200 B. C.
For notices of papyrus and parchment, see paper.
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The former instances particularly concern the use of the stylus.
That of the
pen proper will now claim our attention, after we have stated that the
brush has been used for many centuries in
Eastern Asia, and still holds its career of usefulness in forming the Chinese and Japanese letters.
It has even been suggested that the brush preceded the pen, as the picture or ideographic writing preceded the phonographic; the language of symbols, that of arbitrary signs denoting sounds.
The characters of some written languages are well adapted for the brush, and the skill displayed by
Chinese and Japanese gentlemen is curious and pleasing to us their neighbors, “upon whom the ends of the world are come,” in a sense, for we meet directly by a reverse course the ultimate Orient of our predecessors, ourselves occupying the median line between the new civilizations of
Greece,
Rome, and their derivatives, and the far older and, to us, fantastic forms of
Cathay and the lands thereto adjacent.
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|
Japanese scribe. |
Fig. 3609 has two views from paintings at
Thebes.
The upper figure represents a scribe taking an account of the stock of an estate.
It is a part of a much larger picture, in which the shepherds and groups of animals are shown.
The scribe is writing upon a tablet; before him are two cases for carrying writingmaterials.
On his left is the inkstand with
black and
red ink.
The lower figure shows a scribe with his inkstand upon the table.
One pen is behind his ear, and he is writing with another.
The illustrative history of the Egyptians does not point to a time before the
reed was used as a
pen. The various paintings, palatial and sepulchral, show the scribes at work in their avocations, taking the tale of the hands and ears of slaughtered enemies, the numbers of the captives, the baskets of wheat, the numbers of the animals, the tribute, the treaties and public records.
The
Egyptian pen of the time of Joseph was a reed, and the scribes used
red and
black inks, contained in different receptacles in a desk.
When this Hebrew viceroy had a small army of clerks and store-keepers employed throughout
Egypt in his extensive grain business, his scribes carried their writing-implements in boxes with pendent leather tops, and with handles at the sides.
As the scribe had two colors of ink, he needed two pens, and we see him on the monuments of
Thebes, busy with one pen at work, and the other placed in that most ancient pen-rack, behind the ear. Such is represented in a painting at Beni Hassan.
It is said that the best reeds for the purpose formerly grew near
Memphis, on the
Nile; near
Cnidus of
Caria, in Asia Minor; in
Armenia and in
Italy: those of the latter being of relatively poor quality.
A place yet famous for them, and which may have supplied the ancient demand in part, is in the vicinity of the
Persian Gulf, “in a large fen or tract of soggy land supplied with water by the river
Helle, a place of
Arabia formed by united arms of the
Euphrates and
Tigris.
They are cut in March, tied in bundles, laid six months in a manure-heap, where they assume a beautiful color, mottled yellow and black.”
（Chardin.) Tournefort saw them growing in the neighborhood of Teflis in
Georgia.
Miller describes the cane as “growing no higher than a man, the stem three or four lines in thickness, and solid from one knot to another, excepting the central white pith.”
The incipient fermentation in the manureheap dries up the pith and hardens the cane.
The pens are about the size of the largest swan's quills.
They are cut and slit like our pens, but have much longer nibs.
A little bundle of ancient pens from
Egypt, with the stains of the ink yet upon them, may be seen in the museum of the Historical Society of New York, corner of Second Avenue and Eighth Street. Beside them is a bronze knife used in making the pens.
In the
East, the reed is yet the ordinary implement for writing.
“When he had finished, he dried the
bamboo-pen on his hair, and replaced it behind his ear, saying, ‘
Yak pose’ (That is well). ‘
Temou chu’ (Rest in peace), we replied; and, after politely putting out our tongues, withdrew.” —
Abbe Hue at Lha-Ssa.
The Christian monks of the land once known as Assyria still use a reed for writing the Chaldean character; the ink has a fine glossy character, the paper resembles parchment, and the scribes dispense with a table or desk, resting the paper on the knee.
Reeds are still used by the Arabs; their ink is thick and gummy.
Reed pens are also found in
Herculaneum.
The ancient ink was of a viscid nature; some of it was found in a closed glass bottle in the examination of the city just mentioned.
The quills of birds came into use as pens in the sixth century A. D.; so we learn from Isidore (died A. D. 636) and others.
Previous to this time, the writing-implement is spoken of as
calamus, a reed; after this we read of
penna, a feather: the reed, however, was a favorite in many quarters among the literati of
Europe for five centuries after the first introduction of the quill.
In an illuminated manuscript of the Gospels, executed in the ninth century, the evangelists are represented with quills in their hands.
The quills of the swan, goose, eagle, owl, and hawk were used.
The preference soon settled on those of the goose for obvious reasons, size and accessibility.
In the sixth century the quill-pen is also mentioned by Aldhelmus, a Saxon poet, who wrote a Latin poem entitled “De Penna Scriptoria.”
But a century or so afterward paper was introduced into
Europe by the Saracens; first as a curiosity, known as
Charta Damascena, afterward manufactured in
Spain and in
Constantinople.
See paper.
The list of devices by which characters were legibly portrayed by a scratching implement may be thus recapitulated: —
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The
tabula or wooden board smeared with wax, upon which a letter was written by a stylus.
The
Athenian scratched his vote upon a shell, as did the lout when he voted to ostracize
Aristides.
The records of
Nineveh were inscribed upon tablets of clay, which were then baked.
The laws of
Rome were engraved on brass and laid up in the
Capitol.
The decalogue was
graven upon the tables of stone.
The
Egyptians used papyrus and granite.
The
Burmese, tablets of ivory and leaves.
Pliny mentions sheets of lead, books of linen, and waxed tablets of wood.
The
Hebrews used linen and skins.
The
Persians, Mexicans, and
North American Indians used skins.
The
Greeks, prepared skins, called
membrana.
The people of
Pergamus, parchment and vellum.
The
Hindoos, palm-leaves.
The first attempt at recording was probably what is termed picture-writing.
This combines pantomime and numeration, and is found among many savage nations.
Instances might be cited from
Schoolcraft and from
Catlin, and one remarkable example is given from the works of the latter author.
Fig. 3610 shows the robe of Mah-to-toh-pa, the
head chief of the Mandans, which consisted of the skin of a young buffalo bull with the fur on one side and the battles of his life emblazoned on the other, by his own hand.
It is shown in
Catlin's work on the “
North American Indians,” Vol I. p. 148, and is a good specimen of picture-writing.
It has twelve battle-scenes, showing various fights with
Sioux, Riccarees, Cheyennes, and others.
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Robe of Mah-to-toh-pa (four bears). |
The
Egyptian temples and tombs abound with pictures too conventional to be artistic, but so admirably executed that they are bright and sharp even now. The peculiar atmosphere of the country has had something to do with their singularly perfeet preservation.
Three different forms of writing were used in that wonderful country, — the hieroglvphic, hieratic, and the demotic or enchorial.
The first was probably the direct growth of picture-writing, but the characters had attained a certain arbitrary value at the time when the earliest yet existing records were made.
After what we may assume to have been the lapse of many ages, when the phonetic principle was introduced, an alphabet was framed, in which the sound of the first letter of the name of each object was represented by the object, as A by an eagle (
akkem), M by an owl (
moulag). etc. The Phoenician alphabet was similarly founded: A,
aleph (a bull): B,
beth (a house); G,
ghimel (a camel), etc. These representations, in the earlier periods of their use, may have been executed with such skill as the artist had at command, and varied according to the talent and taste of the limner; but they afterward became conventional, variations were suppressed, and the portraits of the objects became simmered down to mere symbols.
In
Fig. 3611,
a is a view of a glass bead found by
Captain Henvey, R. N., at
Thebes.
The drawing shows it about two thirds the real size; the inscription is developed on the right, and contains the name in hieroglyphics of a monarch who reigned about 1500 B. c.
b,
Fig. 3611, is a remnant of the ages in the shape of a song.
It was discovered by Champollion in a tomb at Eilethyas, and is interpreted by him as follows.
It reads from right to left, and at the end of the first and third lines occurs the
dacapo sign, to repeat the line: —
“Thrash for yourselves Thrash for yourselves O, oxen!
Thrash for yourselves Thrash for yourselves Measure for yourselves Measure for your masters.”
The most enduring of all records is the third in Job's recitation of the modes of writing which may be rendered: —
Written on leaves.
Marked with an iron pen on lead.
Cut into the rock forever.
For many centuries travelers have looked with amazement upon the sculptured buildings of
Egypt,
Nineveh, Phoenicia, and
Persepolis, and upon the inscribed rocks of Behistan, on the frontiers of
Media, and the precipice of Van, in
Armenia.
The solitary monument of
Cyrus in the Murghab, the records of
Babylon and
Nineveh, of the caves of
India, the monuments of Lycia, the tombs of Etruria, the truncated pyramids and portals of
Palenque and Uamal in
Yucatan, and the broken tablets of
Umbria and Samnium, all present riddles of more or less complexity to the students of language.
The setting up of memorial stones was the usual mode of celebrating an achievement or witnessing a pact.
Two rival tribes or families set up an altar or build a pile of stones to determine the mutual boundaries of their pastures.
A successful warrior made a memorial of his victory in the same manner.
The warlike
Osymandyas or
Sesostris recorded the memory of his marches and exploits.
The obelisks of
Heliopolis rise to celebrate the return of manly vigor to the convalescent king.
Phallic monoliths over the
Nile land decently perpetuate the symbols of their religion, and are inscribed with the names and deeds of those who erected them.
Famous in olden times of these lithic monuments are the pillars erected by the children of Seth, as recorded by
Josephus, and those erected by the
Phoenician Hercules in the environs of
Cadiz, monuments of his expedition into
Spain.
In the time of
Demosthenes there was still remaining a column of stone on which the code of laws was engraved.
The decalogue was carried in the ark for forty years, and thereafter remained for several centuries in various places, till it was placed in the temple of Solomon.
The stones were thence carried as trophies to
Babylon.
Engraved gems of the times of the Pharaohs are found among the ruins of the past, and the breastplate of Aaron had twelve stones engraved with the names of the tribes.
The mania for engraving on stones and setting up inscriptions in the wilderness is not dead yet. Missionaries start from the Lama monasteries, year after year, “chisel and hammer in hand, and traverse field, mountain, and desert, to engrave the sacred formula.
Om mane, padme houm, on the stones and rocks they encounter in their path.”
They thus carve in Thibetan, Landza, or Tartar characters a prayer of the ages, the yearning of their great religious teacher.
Sakya Muni, known as Buddha, the Enlightened, who raised his protest against Brahmanic intolerance on the plains of Nepal some twenty-four centuries since.
The formula is from the Sanscrit, which had ceased to be a spoken language in the time of
Alexander of
Macedon.
Its metaphor has been diligently resolved by Klaproth, and, being rendered into
English, it means,
O that I may attain perfection and be absorbed in Buddha!
Amen.
The invading hosts of the Chaldeans left their pictured records on the rocks of
Dog River, the ancient
Lycus, in
Palestine, which here impinges against one of the lofty and abrupt spurs of the mountains of
Lebanon.
These figures of men are ascribed to the time of
Sesostris, and are associated with more recent inscriptions in Persian,
Greek, Latin, and Arabic, indicating the presence of the various conquering races by which that country has been suc-
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cessively subjugated.
Central Asia contains memorials of conquerors of various dynasties.
c,
Fig. 3611, is a portion of an inscription discovered at Hamath in
Northern Syria.
The “entering in of Hamath” is celebrated in the itineraries of these surging nations.
No theory of interpretation has yet been advanced for it. In it have been recognized by some, features of the hieroglyphic, cuneiform, and cursive, suggesting that it was a melange of the three, indicating a transition period.
The symbolic writing seems to have taken on two forms: one, the
ideographic, in which each character comes to represent a word, as in the Chinese,
d,
Fig. 3611 (which is said by Du Halde to have developed into orderly characters by 2300 B. C., which is before the time of Abraham); and the most ancient Babylonian,
e, which
Sir Henry Rawlinson calls the Scythic or Accad alphabet.
The other variant of the symbolic consisted of cursive expressions of the signs which stood for simple sounds, as stated above of the hieratic
Egyptian.
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Ancient writing. |
The
Scythic is among the earliest known of the
cuneiform, so called from the resemblance of their characters to arrow-heads.
It prevailed in the countries watered by the
Euphrates and
Tigris, from the earliest historic period down to the conquest by
Alexander.
The cuneiform evidently sprang from picture-writing, pictorial representations of objects being made to stand for certain words, eventually without regard to their original ideal signification.
From this arbitrary but convenient arrangement came the still farther division by which characters were selected to form a syllabic system, a fixed sign being employed for each connection of a consonant with one of the vowels.
There were many hundreds of these signs, representing the consonant and vowel combinations.
A phrase is represented at
f. The varieties of the cuneiform illustrate the progress of the ideographic to the syllabic; the Assyro-Babylonian is principally ideographic, as at
e; fewer of these signs are in the cuneiform of the second period (
f), and its derivative the Armenian; the Persian cuneiform is substantially syllabic.
The
Hebrew and other languages destitute of vowel indications, as they long were, were practically syllabic.
The cuneiform inscriptions of the Persian monarchs have been resolved by the skill and persistence of Grotefend,
Burnouf,
Rawlinson, and others.
At first they seemed to modern eyes “a mere conglomerate of wedges.
engraved or impressed.”
We have now several translations, editions, grammars, and dictionaries of these inscriptions.
The cuneiform writing runs from left to right.
g,
Fig. 3611, shows the
hieroglyphic, hieratic, and Phoenician characters representing the sounds D, R, L, N, Sh, respectively.
The reading is from the right to the left.
Points of similarity and relationship are at once apparent.
Some of them are fair illustrations of the statement that conventional elisions and modifications have taken place, until the mutilated figure is changed from a portrait to a symbol.
The
hieratic writing is a short-hand pictorial script, in which the figures are somewhat disguised, and is the basis of true alphabetic writing, in which signs stand for vocal elements.
h,
Fig. 3612, is a portion of the inscription on the Moabite stone.
This is the oldest Semitic lapidary record of importance yet discovered.
In the summer of 1868,
Mr. F. A. Klein, an agent of the
Church Missionary Society, made a journey to Kerak, over a country seldom visited by Europeans.
On his arrival at
Diban, the ancient
Dibon, he was informed by Sheikh Zattam that, scarcely ten minutes from their tent, there was a black basalt stone with an inscription on it. This stone he soon found; it was 3 feet 5 inches high, 1 foot 9 inches wide, had thirtyfour straight lines of writing about an inch and a quarter apart, and was rounded to nearly a semicircle at the top and bottom.
Mr. Klein took a sketch of a few lines, and went his way, determined if possible to get it removed to the
Berlin Museum.
M. Ganneau obtained a few squeezes of the face of the stone before it was broken up by the Arabs, who discovered that it had a market value; strange to say. They made a fire under it and then poured water on it, the villains.
Herr Noldeke says: “It is
the most ancient memorial of pure alphabetical writing, much older than any in the Greek.
It is the only
original document on the history of Israel before the time of the Maccabees, and throws light on the relations of
Israel with a neighbor much spoken of in the Old Testament.”
Until the discovery of this stone, the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar (about 600 B. C.) was considered the most ancient inscription of any length.
Here we have a long specimen of the earliest Phoenician character, — the alphabet from which the Greek, the
Roman, and all our
European alphabets are derived.
As
Count de Vogue says, these are the very characters which, before 700 B. C., were common to all the races of
Western Asia, from
Egypt to the foot of the Taurus, and from the Mediterranean to
Nineveh; which were used in
Nineveh itself, in Phoenicia, Jerusalem,
Samaria, the land of
Moab, Cilicia, and
Cyprus.
It disproves the assertion of Aristotle and Pliny that
Cadmus only brought 16 or 18 letters from the
East into
Greece, and that the Greeks invented the rest, for the whole of the 22 are found on this monumental stone.
The Rosetta stone is of 700 years later date.
It was found in 1798 by a French engineer in digging the foundations for a fort near the
Rosetta mouth of the
Nile.
It is a tablet of basalt, with an inscription of the year 196 B. C., during the reign of
Ptolemy Epiphanes.
The inscription is in hieroglyphic, demotic, and
Greek.
It was deciphered by
Dr. Young, and formed the
[
1655]
key to the reading of the hieroglyphic characters.
It was captured by the
English on the defeat of the
French forces in
Egypt, and is now in the British Museum.
The hatchet, mallet, chisel, square, and saw, all occur among the hieroglyphic characters.
i, Fig. 3612, shows small portions of the hieroglyphic and demotic inscriptions, respectively.
The “Canopus” stone has since added to the fund of knowledge on the subject, and has afforded additional means and subjects for comparison.
“It was through the commercial intercourse of the Ionians with the Phoenicians that the Greeks received the characters of their alphabetical writing, which were long termed Phoenician signs.
According to the views which, since Champollion's great discovery, have prevailed more and more respecting the early conditions of the development of alphabetical writing the Phoenician and all the Semitic written characters, though they may have been originally formed from pictorial writing, are to be regarded as a
phonetic alphabet, i. e. as an alphabet in which the ideal signification of the pictured signs is wholly disregarded, and these signs or characters are treated exclusively as signs of sound.
Such a phonetic alphabet, being in its nature and fundamental form a syllabic alphabet, was suited to satisfy all the requirements of a graphical representation of the phonetic system of a language.” — Humboldt.
“Phoenicia, mother of the arts, Letters to learned men imparts.”
Critias,
quoted by ATHENAeUS (A. D. 220).
The ancient
Pelasgic, assumed to be the immediate parent of the Greek, was written from right to left, like the Phoenician, whence it came.
j,
Fig. 3613, is an inscription, [T
ι]-
μων έγραφέ με The letters are Phoenician, as used in early times in
Greece.
It was found in the island of
Thera.
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Pelasgic and Boustrophedon Greek. |
k,
Fig. 3613, is an illustration of the writing
boustrophedon (as oxen plow), right to left and left to right alternately,
χρήσιμος — σομισήρχ. It is from the temple of Bedesish,
Egypt.
Plate XXXIX.
represents the passage, “
God hath made of one blood all nations of men,” in one hundred and three languages.
Fig. 3614 shows the same passage in six Asiatic languages.
The first of these is written from left to right, the other five from right to left.
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Asiatic writing. |
Fig. 3615 shows the same passage in two Turanian languages; the lines are vertical.
g is
Chinese;
h, Japanese.
The Hebrew Scriptures were written upon the skins of ceremonially clean animals or even birds.
These were rolled upon sticks and fastened with a cord, the ends of which were sealed when security was an object.
They were written in columns, and usually upon one side only.
The writing was from right to left; the upper margin was three fingers broad, the lower one four fingers; a breadth of two fingers separated the columns.
The columns ran across the width of the sheet, the rolled ends of which were held vertically in the respective hands.
When one column was read, another was exposed to view by unrolling it from the end in the left hand, while the former was hidden from view by rolling up the end grasped by the right hand.
The pen was a reed, the ink black, carried in a bottle suspended from the girdle.
The
Samaritan Pentateuch is very ancient, as is proved by the criticisms of Talmudic writers.
A copy of it was acquired in 1616 by Pietro della
Valle, one of the first discoverers of the cuneiform inscriptions.
It was thus introduced to the notice of
Europe.
It is claimed by the Samaritans of Nablus that their copy was written by Abisha, the great-grandson of Aaron, in the thirteenth year of the settlement of the land of
Canaan by the Children of Israel.
The copies of it brought to
Europe are all written in black ink on vellum or cotton paper, and vary from 12mo to folio.
The scroll used by the Samaritans is written in gold letters.
(See
Smith's “Dictionary of the
Bible.”
Vol. III. pp. 1106-1118.) Its claims to great antiquity are not admitted by scholars.
Previous to the tenth century, the manuscripts were written in capital letters, and without a space between the words.
The three most important and valuable of them are the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the
Alexandrian, many of whose various readings are given by Tischendorf in his
Leipsic edition of the
English New Testament.
The Sinaitic manuscript, critically marked
Aleph, written on parchment, was discovered by Tischendorf, February 4, 1859, in the convent of St. Catharine, on
Mount Sinai, in
Arabia, and published by him in fac-simile in 1862, and in the common type in 1865.
It contains the entire New Testament, and is deposited in the
Imperial Library at
St. Petersburg.
It was printed in
Leipsic for the
Emperor of
Russia, to be a memorial of the thousandth anniversary of his king-
[
1656]
dom. It is in uncial characters, apparently of the fourth century.
The Vatican manuscript, marked B, also written about the middle of the fourth century, has been published only since 1857.
It is in the
Vatican Library at
Rome.
The Alexandrian manuscript, marked A, written about the middle of the fifth century, was first published in 1786.
It is in the British Museum, at
London.
The
Ephraim or Royal
Paris manuscript, marked C, of the fifth century, and the
Cambridge manuscript, marked D, of the sixth century, are next in value.
These marks are agreed upon by scholars to designate certain manuscripts.
The enumeration of some of the modes of writing may be interesting: —
The
Mexican writing is in vertical columns, beginning at the bottom.
The
Chinese and
Japanese write in vertical columns, beginning (
Fig. 3615.) at the top and passing from left to right.
The
Egyptian hieroglyphics are written in vertical columns or horizontal lines according to the shape and position of the tablet.
It is said that with the horizontal writing the direction is indifferent, but that the figures of men and animals face the beginning of the line.
With figures, the units stand on the left.
The
Egyptians also wrote from right to left in the hieratic and the demotic or enchorial styles.
The
Pelasgians did the same (
j,
Fig. 3613), and were followed by the Etruscans.
In the demotic character,
Dr. Brugsch remarks that, though the general direction of the writing was usually from right to left, yet the individual letters were formed from left to right, as is evident from the unfinished ends of horizontal letters when the ink failed in the pen.
In writing numbers in the hieratic and enchorial the units were placed to the left.
The
Arabs write from right to left, but received their numerals from
India, whence they call them
“Hindee,” and there the arrangement of their numerals is like our own, units to the right.
The
Ethiopic and cuneiform characters (
c e,
Fig. 3611) are written from left to right like our own, and this is true of most of the Indo-
European languages, while those of Semitic origin are written from right to left.
The Phoenician alphabet, the reputed parent of this family, is so written, and the branches include the Chaldaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Carthaginian, Samaritan, Arabic, and Persian characters.
The Pelasgic tribes spoke a language of the Aryan family, allied to the Sanscrit, but obtained their letters from the Phoenicians, and long wrote them from right to left (
j,
Fig. 3613) as in the land from whence they were adopted.
The
Greek was afterward written
boustrophedon (as oxen plow), right to left and left to right alternately (
k,
Fig. 3613); in allusion to the usual mode of plowing, before mold-boards and plowing in lands were invented, when the oxen returned close alongside the last furrow made.
The laws of
Solon were written
boustrophedon. The later
Greek, long before the Christian era, came to be written from left to right like the Sanscrit and the other languages to which it — not its characters — was allied.
The number of letters in the following alphabets is thus given in Ballhorn's “Grammatography,”
Trubner & Co., 1831: —
The letter “J” was introduced into the alphabets by
Giles Beye, a printer of
Paris, 1660.
Short-hand writing was known to the Greeks and Romans.
Its invention was ascribed to
Xenophon.
It was introduced into
Rome by
Cicero.
Pliny employed a short-hand amanuensis.
The
Chinese dictionary shows 43,496 words: of these 13,000 are irrelevant, and consist of signs which are ill-formed and obsolete.
For ordinary use 4,000 signs suffice.
Kung-fu-tze can be read with a knowledge of 2,500.
There are 214 root-signs, so to speak, which indicate the pronunciation, and form
keys or
radicals, called by the Chinese
tribunals. Each character is a word, and the actual number is vastly increased by tones which give quite a different value and meaning.
Quills for pens are assorted into qualities determined by the character of the barrel.
They are plunged into heated sand to make the exterior skin peel off and the interior membrane shrivel up. This may be performed, however, by alternate soaking in water and drying before a charcoal fire.
They are hardened by soaking in a hot solution of alum.
The yellow color so much admired is conferred upon the quill by a dip into nitric acid.
Iron pens are mentioned by
Chamberlayne in 1685.
The first metallic pens regularly introduced for sale were by
Wise, about 1803.
They were made in
barrel form, being adapted to slip on a stick, and under the name of
perpetual pen were industriously distributed throughout the stationers' shops of
London.
The prejudice was strong against them, and up to 1835 or thereabouts quills maintained their full sway, and much later among people of a conservative cast of mind and in the circumlocution offices here and abroad.
The writer recollects the tedious waiting for the patient usher who passed from desk to desk with his pen-knife, mending pens and paying very little attention to anything else; also the wonder felt and expressed at the first sight of steel nibs, and how they dug into the paper.
Bramah patented
quill-nibs; made by splitting quills and cutting the semicylinders into sections which were shaped into pens and adapted to be placed in a holder.
These were, perhaps, the first
nibs, the progenitors of a host of steel, gold, and other pens.
See pen-maker.
Hawkins and Mordan, in 1823, made nibs of
horn and
tortoiseshell, instead of quill.
The tortoise-shell being softened,
points of
ruby and
diamond were imbedded.
Metallic points were also cemented to the shell nibs.
Doughty, about 1825, made
gold pens with
ruby points. See
gold pen.
Gold pens with
rhodium points were introduced soon afterward.
Gillott devoted much pains to the improvement of the material and manufacture.
One of his patents was in 1831.
See steel pen.
Perry exercised considerable ingenuity in the application of new forms and in developing the elasticity.
His patents were in 1830 and 1832.
Mordan's
oblique pen, English patent, 1831, was designed to present the nibs in the right direction while preserving what most people appear to think the most convenient position of the pen and the hand.
Scheffer's
fountain-pen was introduced about 1835 by Mordan.
The pressure of the thumb on a stud in the holder caused a continuous supply of ink to flow from the reservoir to the pen. See fountain pen.
Parker's
hydraulic pen (
English) has a piston which works up and down in a tube by means of a screw stem and a revolving nut on the end of the holder.
Fig. 3616 shows several forms of pens.
 |
|
Pens. |
a is a pen with a broad flat nib made for marking packages, for writing placards and show-bills.
Ink is retained between the several superposed plates, and the breadth of the nib determines the width of the stroke, unless the pen is turned edgewise.
b is a reservoir pen having fluted sides to lead the ink from the reservoir to the nib
c is the iridium-tipped goldnib pen, mounted with guttapercha or hard rubber.
d has wings to hold a globule of ink.
e has a flexible strap around the nibs for the same purpose.
f has a peculiarly bent body to give elasticity and also form a holder for ink.
g has wire below the nib, to hold ink.
h has bent-over wings for the same purpose
i has a wire likewise.
j, a depression in the body of the pen.
k, a cruciform piece riveted to the under side of the pen.
2. An ink-leg of a compass.
A draftsman's instrument for drawing lines of even thickness, or dotting lines.
See drawing-pen.
[
1657]
See
gold pen; steel pen; fountain-pen; drawing-pen; ruling-pen; music-pen; dotting-pen, etc.
3. An inclosure of limited size for cattle or hogs.
