Chapter III

Origin of the Materials of Writing, Tablets, etc.

The art of writing is very ancient. Its origin is actually lost in the distance of time. From one point, however,—this side of the gulf of lost ages, in which high art perished, and with it the key to all its antediluvian greatness,—we date our history.

The Bible gives us the earliest notice on the subject that is anywhere to be found. The most ancient mode of writing was on _cinders_, on bricks, and on _tables of stone_; afterwards on _plates_ of various materials, on _ivory_ and similar articles. One of the earliest methods was to cut out the letters on a tablet of stone. Moses, we are told, received the two tables of the Covenant on Mount Sinai, written with the finger of God; and before that, Moses himself was not ignorant of the use of letters.[9] [Exodus xxiv. 4; xvii. 14.] A learned writer says:—“In Genesis v. 1, ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam,’ reference is made to the book of genealogy; whence it irresistibly follows that writing must have been in use among the antediluvian patriarchs; and, under the view that writing was a divine revelation, the same almighty power that, according to the preceding proposition, instructed Moses, could have equally vouchsafed a similar inspiration to any patriarch from Adam to Noah. Nor does it seem consistent with the merciful dispensation which preserved Noah’s family through the grand cataclysm, and had condescended, according to the biblical record, to teach him those multitudinous arts indispensably necessary to the construction of a vessel destined to pass uninjured through the tempests of the Deluge, that the Almighty, by withholding the art of writing, should have left the account of antediluvian events to the vicissitudes of oral tradition, or denied to Noah’s family the practice of this art, which, it is maintained, was conceded first to Moses.”

It is said that “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” The five books of Moses carry with them internal evidence, not of one sole, connected, and original composition, but of a _compilation_ by an inspired writer from earlier annals. The genealogical tables and family records of various tribes that are found embodied in the Pentateuch, bear the appearance of documents copied from written archives. We have the authority of Genesis v. 1 for asserting the existence of a book of genealogies in the time of Noah; and a city mentioned by Joshua was named in Hebrew “Kirjath Sefer,” “The City of Letters.” It is impossible to prove that letters were unknown before Moses; and the Hebrews of his day appear to have had two distinct modes of writing the characters of which, in one case, were “_alphabetic_,” and in the other “_symbolic_.” The inscription on the ephod itself is said—Exodus xxviii. 36—to have been written in characters “like the engravings of a signet.”

The materials and instruments with which writing was performed were, in comparison with our pen, ink, and paper, extremely rude and unwieldy. One of the earliest methods was to cut out the letters on a tablet of stone. Another was to trace them on unbaked tiles, or bricks, which were afterwards thoroughly baked or burned with fire. When the writing was wanted to be more durable, lead or brass was employed. In the book of Job, mention is made of writing on stone. It was on tablets of stone that Moses received the law written by the finger of God himself. Tablets of wood were frequently used as being more convenient. Such was the writing-table which Zacharias used. [Luke i. 63.] Cedar was preferred as being more incorruptible; from this custom arose the celebrated saying of the ancients, when they meant to give the highest eulogium of an excellent work, _et cedro digna locuti_,—that it was worthy to be written on cedar. These tablets were made of the trunks of trees. The same reason which led them to prefer the cedar to other trees, induced them to write on wax, which is incorruptible. Men used it to write their testaments, in order better to preserve them. Thus, Juvenal says, _cereus implere capaces_. The leaves and, at other times, the bark of different trees were early used for writing. From the thin films of bark peeled off from the Egyptian reed papyrus which grew along the Nile, a material was formed in latter times answering the purpose much better. It bore the name of the reed, papyrus, or, in our language, paper. Long afterwards its name passed to a different material, composed of linen or cotton, which has taken place of all others in the use of civilized countries, and is called to this day paper. Paper made of cotton was in use in 1001; that of linen rags in 1319.[10]

“_The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, ... shall wither, be driven away, and be no more._”—Isaiah xix. 7.

Pliny, speaking of the papyrus, says:—

“Before we depart out of Egypt, we must not forget the plant _papyrus_, but describe the nature thereof, considering that all civilitie of life, the memoriall, and immortalitie also of men after death consisteth especially in _paper_ which is made thereof. M. Varro writeth that the first invention of making paper was devised upon the conquest of Ægypt, achieved by Alexander the Great, at what time as he founded the city of Alexandria in Ægypt, where such paper was first made.”—_Holland_, _Plinie_, b. xiii. c. 21.

We have alluded to the barks of trees being used. The thin peel which is found between the second skin of a tree was called _liber_,—from whence the Latin word, _liber_, a book; and we have derived the name of library and librarian in the European language, and in the French their _livre_ for book.

_THE PEN._

The instruments employed by the ancients for making the letters on their tablets was a small, pointed piece of iron, or some other hard substance, called by the Romans a _style_: hence a man’s manner of composition was figuratively called his _style_ of writing. The use of the word still continues, though the instrument has long since passed away.

Style derives its name from _stylus_, Latin, as also from a Greek word, _columna_, an instrument with a point.

Reeds formed into pens were used to trace the letters with ink of some sort after the fashion that is now common; or else they were painted with a small brush, as was probably the general custom at first. Pens made of quills were not in use until the fifth century. The oldest certain account of writing with quills is a passage of Isidore, who died in 636, and who, among the instruments of writing, mentions “reeds and feathers.” In the same century a small poem was written on a pen, which is to be found in the works of Althelmus. He died in 709.

We annex the following as giving a poetical original of the pen:—

“Love begg’d and pray’d old Time to stay
While he and Psyche toyed together;
Love held his wings: Time tore away,
But in the scuffle dropp’d a feather.
Love seized the prize, and with his dart
Adroitly work’d to trim and shape it,
O Psyche, though ’tis pain to part,
This charm shall make us half escape it.
Time need not fear to fly too slow
When he this useful loss discovers,
A pen’s the only plume I know
That wings her pace for absent lovers.”

_PENCILS._

The ancients drew their lines with leaden styles; afterwards a mixture of tin and lead fused together was used. The mineral known under the name of plumbago is supposed to have been first employed for the purpose of drawing in the fifteenth century. In 1565, an old author notes that people had pencils for writing which consisted of a wooden handle, in which was a piece of lead; and a drawing is given of the pencil as an object of curiosity. They continued to be uncommon for upwards of a century, when we hear them spoken of being enclosed in pine or cedar.

_THE SCRIBE._

“Scribe was a name which, among the Jews, was applied to two
sorts of officers. 1. To a civil: and so it signifies a
notary, or, in a large sense, any one employed to draw up
deeds and writings. 2. This name signifies a church officer,
one skillful and conversant in the law to interpret and
explain it.”—_South._ vol. iv. ser. 1.

The word _scribe_ is derived from the Latin, _scribere_, which has the same meaning as “schrabben” (Dutch), to scrape or draw a style, or pen, over the surface of paper or parchment.

The name, however, was given to such as excelled in the use of the pen, and who were likewise distinguished in other branches of knowledge. It came in time to mean simply a learned man; and, as the chief part of learning among the Jews was concerned with the sacred books of Scripture, the word signified especially one “who was _skilled in the law of God_”—one whose business it was, not merely to provide correct copies of its volume, but also to explain its meaning. Thus, Ezra is called “a ready scribe of the law of Moses.”—Ezra vii. 6.

Before the introduction of types, books were written generally upon skins, linen, cotton-cloth, or papyrus: parchment in later times was most esteemed. The business of the scribes was to make duplicate copies of these books, which, when completed, the leaves were pinned together so as to make a single long sheet. This was then rolled round a stick: hence books of every description or size were called “rolls;” our word volume means just the same thing in its original signification.

“_Volumed in rolling masses._”

In the time of our Saviour the scribes formed quite a considerable class in society. Many of them belonged to the sanhedrim, or chief council, and are therefore frequently mentioned in the New Testament with the elders and chief priests.—See Luke v. 17, x. 25; Matthew xxiii. 2; Matthew ii. 4, also xiii. 52; and Mark xii. 35.

_ANCIENT INK._

The ink used by the ancients appears to have been what is termed in art a “body color,” or a more solid medium than is at present used, and similar to what is used by the modern Chinese.

Subsequently, lamp-black, or the black taken from burnt ivory, and soot from furnaces and baths, according to Pliny and others, formed the basis of the ink used by old writers.

It has also been conjectured that the black liquor of the scuttle-fish was frequently employed.[11] Of whatever ingredients it was made, it is certain, from chemical analysis, from the blackness and solidity in the most ancient manuscripts, and from inkstands found at Herculaneum, in which the ink appears like thick oil, that the ink then made was much more opaque, as well as encaustic, than what is used at present. Inks red, purple, and blue, and also gold and silver inks were much used; the red was made from vermilion, cinnabar, and carmine; the purple from the _murex_, one sort of which, named the purple encaustic, was set apart for the sole use of the emperors. Golden ink was used by the Greeks much more than by the Romans. The manufacture of both gold and silver ink was an extensive and lucrative business in the Middle Ages. Another distinct business was that of inscribing the titles, capitals, as well as emphatic words, in colored and gold and silver inks.

_INK-HORNS._

The ink-horns were sometimes made of lead, sometimes of silver, and were generally polygonal in their form.

_HIEROGLYPHICAL WRITING._

The remote antiquity of hieroglyphical writing may be inferred from the fact that it must have existed before the use of the _solar_ month in Egypt,—“which,” says Gliddon, “astronomical observations on Egyptian records prove to have been in use at an epoch close up to the Septuagint era of the Flood.” From Egyptian annals we may glean some faint confirmation of the view that they either possessed the _primeval_ alphabet, or else they rediscovered its equivalent from the mystic functions and attributes of the “two Thoths,”—the first and second Hermes, both Egyptian mythological personages, deified as attributes of the Godhead.

To “Thoth,” Mercury, or the first Hermes, the Egyptians ascribed the invention of _letters_.

The first attempts of “picture-writing” were to imitate certain images, each representing a word or letter. Drawing, therefore, was the most natural medium; and the study of representing things pictorially became popular and the only mode of communication.

The true origin of alphabetical writing has never been traced; but that of the Egyptians has been proved by the Comte de Caylus to be formed, as stated above, of hieroglyphical marks, adopted with no great variations. “We find,” says Warburton, “no appearance of alphabetical writing or characters on their public monuments.”

This, however true at the time he wrote, cannot now be asserted; since the celebrated Rosetta stone, in the British Museum, is engraved with three distinct sets of characters,—Greek, Egyptian, and a third resembling what are called hieroglyphics. The only doubt that can be entertained is, whether these are strictly hieroglyphics,—that is, representations of things,—or rather an alphabetical character peculiar to the priesthood, and called hierogrammatics. 1. The existence of this sacred alphabet is attested by Herodotus, Diodorus, and several other writers. 2. It went occasionally under the name of hieroglyphic, as appears not only by the passage quoted above from Manetho, if we do not alter the text, but from one in Porphyry, which may be found in Warburton. 3. It was, however, considered as perfectly distinct from the genuine hieroglyphic, which was always understood to denote things, either by mere picture-writing, or, more commonly, by very refined allegory. 4. Works of a popular and civil nature were written in this character, as we learn from Clement of Alexandria; whereas the genuine hieroglyphic was exceedingly secret and mysterious, and the knowledge of it confined to the priesthood. 5. The inscription upon the Rosetta stone is said, in the terms of the decree contained in it, to be written in the sacred, national, and Greek characters. 6. It could not be a mysterious character, such as the genuine hieroglyphic seems to have been, because it was exposed to public view with a double translation. 7. It occupies a considerable space upon the stone, although an indefinite part of it is broken off; although the real hieroglyphic, as is natural to emblematic writing, appears to have been exceedingly compendious. 8. The characters do not appear to be very numerous, as they recur in various combinations of three, four, or more, as might be expected from the letters of an alphabet. But this argument we do not strongly press, because our examination has not been very long. It appears to hold out a decisive test, and we offer it as such to the ingenuity of antiquaries.

Upon these grounds we think that the characters upon the Rosetta stone, which are commonly denominated hieroglyphics, are in fact the original alphabetic characters of the Egyptians, from which the others have probably been derived by a gradual corruption through haste in writing. They are, however, in one sense, hieroglyphics, being tolerably accurate delineations of men, animals, and instruments. If we are right in our conjectures, the value of the Rosetta stone is incomparably greater than has been imagined. We have no need of hieroglyphics: Roman and Egyptian monuments are full of them. But a primitive alphabet, probably the earliest ever formed in the world, and illustrating an important link in the history of writing,—the adaptation of signs to words,—is certainly a discovery very interesting to any philosophical mind. Through what steps the analysis of articulate sound into its constituent parts was completed—if we can say that it ever has been completed—so as to establish distinct marks for each of them, and whether these marks were taken at random, or from some supposed analogy between the simple sounds they were brought to represent and their primary hieroglyphical meaning, are questions which stand in need of solution.[12]

The Rosetta stone is the only one yet discovered, being no doubt the _pioneer_ to many more that may yet be unearthed. The importance of this stone—its inscription indicating the probability of its supplying a key to the deciphering of the long-lost meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphics—“was immediately,” says Gliddon, in his Lectures on Ancient Egypt, “perceived by the learned, who in vain endeavored to trace the analogy between symbolical and alphabetical writing. Its arrival in London excited the liveliest interest in all those who had devoted themselves to Egyptian archæology; and the attention of the greatest scholars of the age was directed to its critical investigation.” (See Gliddon’s work on Ancient Egypt.)

Any one who will examine the hieroglyphical alphabet closely will discover a most extraordinary coincidence in that of the symbolical writing of our North American Indians, specimens of which are in the museum at Washington City. A war despatch, giving an account of one of their expeditions, has the same emblematical figures as has that of the Egyptians as used 1550 B. C.

There are also among other tribes many remarkable similarities, and analogous with Egyptian symbolical writings, which strengthen the supposition that the Indians of North America are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Nor is it alone the mere words which these signs and figures convey, but certain traits of character in their habits and customs as compared with the ancients.—(See Isaiah xi. 11-15.)

The Indians have a tradition among them to this effect: “_that nine parts of their nation out of ten passed over a great river_.” They also have traditions of the “Flood,” “a good book,” “Tower of Babel,” “dispersion of the Jews,” and the “confounding of language.” It is related by Father Charlevoix, the French historian, that the Hurons and Iroquois in their early day had a tradition among them that the first woman came from heaven and had twins, and that the elder killed the younger. In 1641 an old Indian woman stated that this tradition among her tribe was that the Great Spirit had killed his brother. This is evidently a confusion of the story of Cain and Abel. Still, the tradition is remarkable from the fact that this, as well as the others alluded to, existed long before the discovery of this continent.

The Ottawas say that there are two great beings who rule and govern the universe, and who are at war with each other. The one they call “_Mameto_,” the other “Matchemaneto.” There is a wonderful, or rather, we should say, a remarkable, resemblance between the language of the Creek Indians with that of the ancient Hebrew; for instance: “Y He Howa” means Jehovah; “Halleluwah,” hallelujah; “Abba,” in Creek, has the same meaning as “Abba” in Hebrew; “Kesh,” kesh; “Abe,” Abel; “Kenaaj,” Canaan; “Awah,” Eve, or Eweh; “Korah,” Cora; “Jennois,” Jannon, both literally meaning, “He shall be called a son.” There is more in these similarities than can be attributed to mere chance.

Any one at all familiar with hieroglyphical writing need only to examine the Indian characters upon buffalo and other skins received in trade from the Indians to trace, as it were, a distinct line from that most ancient school of designing figures to suit expression and language, down to these tribes, who may well be called the descendants of the “remnant of” God’s people, who were scattered over the lands of Egypt and the “islands of the sea,” in the time of Isaiah.

In the Ambrosian Library at Milan there are to be seen Mexican hieroglyphics, painted in Mexico upon buck-leather, and were presented to the Emperor Charles V. by Ferdinand Cortez. These hieroglyphics are now as little understood as are those of Egypt, although both are now gradually yielding to the mind’s influence in their development. Impressions of these were taken on copper from fac-similes in the possession of Humboldt.

Perhaps the first real step made into the hieroglyphical arcana may be dated from 1797, when the learned Dane, George Zoega, published at Rome his folio “De Origine et Usa Obeliscorum,” explanatory of the Egyptian Obelisks.—(_G. R. Gliddon._)

_THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES—THE CONFOUNDING OF LANGUAGES._

One of the most remarkable passages in Holy Writ is that which speaks of the confounding of language. “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language. Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of the earth, and they left off to build the city.”

The name of it was called “Babel” (confusion), from the Hebrew. The consequence of this eternal fiat, which went forth like a flash of lightning, was, that the people became as strangers to each other, and spoke a language wild and chaotic. Gesticulation took the place of words; and hence their punishment for daring to contest power with their Creator.

The building of the Tower of Babel was an act of Nimrod’s, who “esteemed it a piece of cowardice to submit to God;” and he urged the people on to build this tower, saying, _He would be revenged on God_ if he should ever have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build it so high the waters could not reach it. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon. From this date may be ascribed the history of languages. It is supposed, however, that Noah and other pious persons, chiefly the descendants of Shem in the line of Eber, not being concerned in this project, retained the _original_ language. Now, if this was, as it is highly probable, the Hebrew, we may conclude it was thus called from Eber, to whose descendants it was peculiar; and perhaps this is the most satisfactory reason that can be assigned why Abraham is called the Hebrew and his posterity Hebrews.

It was not, however, the mere confusion of tongues which rendered the people incapable of conversing one with another, but it was the extraordinary miracle connected with it of the _mind’s confusion_. Incapable, therefore, of bringing their original language back to its former use, they invented new languages, new phrases; and thus in time every great nation had its own language. The dividing of languages was therefore the dividing of nations. The precise number of original languages then heard for the first time cannot be determined. The Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Sclavonian, Tartarian, and Chinese languages are considered to be original: the rest are only dialects from them.

History is silent on the early data of the building of the Tower of Babel; nor is one of its builders’ names mentioned, except the somewhat obscure intimation respecting Nimrod.[13]

Babylon subsequently became the head-quarters of idolatry, and the type of the “mystical Babylon,” the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

The glory of Babylon departed. Its walls of sixty miles in circumference, eighty-seven feet thick and three hundred and fifty feet high, built of brick and containing twenty-five gates of solid brass and two hundred and fifty towers, are now the wonder of men who gaze upon the _debris_ of “splendor in ruins.”

The ruins of “Birs Nimrod,” on an elevated mount, are supposed to be the Tower of Babel of the sacred Scriptures, and the temple of Belus, so minutely described by Herodotus. The base of this tower measures two thousand and eighty-two feet in circumference. Babylon was in its glory in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It was besieged and taken by Cyrus B. C. 538, and afterwards by Alexander the Great.