Reef Badlaw
Mar 15th, 2011, 5:31 AM
I've always sensed a huge controversy existed when those in positions of mass-manipulation prompted the changeover from rolled papyrus-texts to block-form parchment-pages. -Huge. Assuming our ancestors were as stubbornly 'superstitious' about veering from tradition as we are today.
The aesthetically-pleasing act of unrolling a papyral-script; gone... Wisdom, proverbs, lore, medical-knowledge, all suddenly available without the ritual of unrolling, and spreading the page flat for full display... " I'm not going to listen to anything that isn't on a rolled-scroll. Something that's nakedly displayed on a page, from a pile of pages, seems generic. Cheap," I can hear my relatives saying.
The British Museum's longest papyrus is about 130' long, or 40km. It's one of the boring ones, that just explains who-the-temple-owes and why, blah blah blah, with a brief history of Ramessus III thrown-in. I'd hate to see the scroll-size of an non-brief history. The point is, that the scroll-form gave it a sense of historical-proportion... and it's unrolling meant: Everybody shut-up and pay-attention, because a person of exclusive importance is going to recite-from this obviously sacred tablum of history.
Like the old criticism, by traditional sit-down restaurants against the 'new' fast-food restaurants... " WE have a menu that you can leisurely read. THEY have a few-things-on-a-wall... " That is how 'parchment' was greeted, I think.
" WE have knowledge that you can leisurely unroll. THEY have a few things on vellium-sheepskin. "
Aristotle had to've figured-out that papyrus caught-fire easily. It didn't store well. He couldn't hire 'library thugs', like Ptolemy, Ptolemy 2, or the Alexandria Library-group could. -Professional transcribers. 'Paper' took weeks to craft from a fig-tree, and pound-thin with with stone. I don't find anything about Aristotle's library, other than it was copied to form the base-collection of the 'new' Alexandra Library. Anybody who visited Alexandria, and found-to-be carrying a scrolled-script, was legally kidnapped until their scroll was copied. The collection grew... by coincidence, the Library dispatched teams-of-thieves all over the Known World to steal scrolls.
But parchment began appearing, spurred-on by the 'new guys', or Alexandria's chief rival: The Library Of Pergamum, say 175 BCE. They specialized in parchment; writing on prepared animal-skins, plus they figured-out how to store papyrus by creating shelves with breathing-space against humidity. They invented 'the reading room', and decorated it with a statue of Athena; goddess of wisdom.
Alexandria's structure was designed-around claustrophobic wood-shelving. When Rome attacked, in 48 BCE, the library was either torched purposefully or colaterally. (No, Pharos: the Lighthouse At Alexandria wasn't the original legendary Library of Alexandria. Later volumes were stored there for convenience-and-proximity... then met the same fate as the lighthouse.) Mark Anthony decided-to sack Pergamum and kiss Cleopatra's ass by replacing Alexandria's burnt papyrus-collection with Pergamum's parchmental-facsimile. I imagine the Alexandria Library-hierarchy and Cleopatra had some puppet-strings connecting them.
That's why no history-book ever explains the changeover. The impact was huge. It'd be like changing from the Victrola-needle to iPod worldwide, in about 50-to-60 hours.
The aesthetically-pleasing act of unrolling a papyral-script; gone... Wisdom, proverbs, lore, medical-knowledge, all suddenly available without the ritual of unrolling, and spreading the page flat for full display... " I'm not going to listen to anything that isn't on a rolled-scroll. Something that's nakedly displayed on a page, from a pile of pages, seems generic. Cheap," I can hear my relatives saying.
The British Museum's longest papyrus is about 130' long, or 40km. It's one of the boring ones, that just explains who-the-temple-owes and why, blah blah blah, with a brief history of Ramessus III thrown-in. I'd hate to see the scroll-size of an non-brief history. The point is, that the scroll-form gave it a sense of historical-proportion... and it's unrolling meant: Everybody shut-up and pay-attention, because a person of exclusive importance is going to recite-from this obviously sacred tablum of history.
Like the old criticism, by traditional sit-down restaurants against the 'new' fast-food restaurants... " WE have a menu that you can leisurely read. THEY have a few-things-on-a-wall... " That is how 'parchment' was greeted, I think.
" WE have knowledge that you can leisurely unroll. THEY have a few things on vellium-sheepskin. "
Aristotle had to've figured-out that papyrus caught-fire easily. It didn't store well. He couldn't hire 'library thugs', like Ptolemy, Ptolemy 2, or the Alexandria Library-group could. -Professional transcribers. 'Paper' took weeks to craft from a fig-tree, and pound-thin with with stone. I don't find anything about Aristotle's library, other than it was copied to form the base-collection of the 'new' Alexandra Library. Anybody who visited Alexandria, and found-to-be carrying a scrolled-script, was legally kidnapped until their scroll was copied. The collection grew... by coincidence, the Library dispatched teams-of-thieves all over the Known World to steal scrolls.
But parchment began appearing, spurred-on by the 'new guys', or Alexandria's chief rival: The Library Of Pergamum, say 175 BCE. They specialized in parchment; writing on prepared animal-skins, plus they figured-out how to store papyrus by creating shelves with breathing-space against humidity. They invented 'the reading room', and decorated it with a statue of Athena; goddess of wisdom.
Alexandria's structure was designed-around claustrophobic wood-shelving. When Rome attacked, in 48 BCE, the library was either torched purposefully or colaterally. (No, Pharos: the Lighthouse At Alexandria wasn't the original legendary Library of Alexandria. Later volumes were stored there for convenience-and-proximity... then met the same fate as the lighthouse.) Mark Anthony decided-to sack Pergamum and kiss Cleopatra's ass by replacing Alexandria's burnt papyrus-collection with Pergamum's parchmental-facsimile. I imagine the Alexandria Library-hierarchy and Cleopatra had some puppet-strings connecting them.
That's why no history-book ever explains the changeover. The impact was huge. It'd be like changing from the Victrola-needle to iPod worldwide, in about 50-to-60 hours.