INK UTENSILS OF ANTIQUITY.
THE GRAVING TOOL PRECEDES THE PEN--CLASSIFICATION
UNDER TWO HEADS, ONE WHICH SCRATCHED AND THE
OTHER WHICH USED AN INK--THE STYLUS AND THE
MATERIALS OF WHICH IT WAS COMPOSED--POETICALLY
DESCRIBED--COMMENTS BY NOEL HUMPHREYS--RECAPITULATION
OF VARIOUS DEVICES BY KNIGHT--BIBLICAL
REFERENCES--ENGRAVED STONES AND OTHER
MATERIALS THE EARLIEST KINDS OF RECORDS--WHEN
THIN BRICKS WERE UTILIZED FOR INSCRIPTION
PURPOSES--METHODS EMPLOYED BY THE CHINESE--
HILPRECHT'S DISCOVERIES--THE DIAMOND AS A SCRATCHING
INSTRUMENT--HISTORICAL INCIDENT WRITTEN
WITH ONE--BIBLICAL MENTION ABOUT THE DIAMOND--
WHEN IT BECAME POSSIBLE TO INTERPRET
CHARACTER VALUES OF ANCIENT HIEROGLYPHICS--DISCOVERY
OF THE ROSETTA STONE AND A DESCRIPTION OF
IT--SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT CHAMPOLLION AND
DR. YOUNG WHO DECIPHERED IT--ITS CAPTURE BY
THE ENGLISH AND PRESERVATION IN THE BRITISH
MUSEUM--EMPLOYMENT OF THE REED PEN AND PENCIL-
BRUSH--THE BRUSH PRECEDED THE REED PEN--THE
PLACES WHERE THE REEDS GREW--COMMENTS BY
VARIOUS WRITERS--METHOD OF FORMING THE REED
INTO A PEN--CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT OF THEM IN
THE FAR EAST--THE BRUSH STILL IN USE IN CHINA
AND JAPAN--EARLIEST EXAMPLES OF REED PEN WRITING--
WHEN THE QUILL WAS SUBSTITUTED FOR THE
REED--REED PENS FOUND IN THE RUINS OF
HERCULANEUM--ANECDOTE BY THE ABBE, HUC.
THE instruments of antiquity employed in the art
of writing belong to two of the most distant epochs.
In the first period, inscriptions were engraved,
carved or impressed with sharp instruments, and of
patterns characteristic of a graving tool, chisel or other
form which could be adapted to particular substances
like stone, leaves, metal or ivory plates, wax or clay
tablets, cylinders and prisms.
The ancient Assyrians even used knives or stamps
for impressing their cuneiform writing upon cylinders
or prisms of soft clay which were often glazed by
subsequent bakings in kilns.
The other period was that in which written characters
were made with liquids or paints of any kind or
color. The liquids (inks) were used in connection
with a pen manufactured from a reed (calamus), while
the paints were "painted" on the various substances
with a brush. The writing executed with both of
these instruments was on materials like the bark of
trees, cloth, skins, papyrus, vellum, etc.
The ancient as well as modern pens, though of many
sorts and kinds, are to be classified under two general
heads, those which scratch and those which use
an ink.
There is no authority to dispute the generally conceded
fact that the "scratching" instrument was the
first one used. Its most popular form seems to have
been the stylus or bodkin, which was made of a variety
of materials, such as iron, ivory, bone, minerals or any
other hard substance, which could be sufficiently
sharpened at one end to indent the various materials
employed in connection with its use. The other end
was flattened for erasing marks made on wax and
smoothing it. From it the Italian stilletto took its
origin.
The stylus is best described in the following
lines:
"My head is flat and smooth, but sharp my foot,
And by man's hand to different uses put;
For what my foot performs with art and care,
My head makes void, such opposites they are."
Relative to the employment of marking instruments
which belong to the most venerable antiquity, Noel
Humphreys observes:
"Before the growth of wealth and luxury had
taught nations to raise magnificent temples and
stately palaces, whose walls the hieroglyphic sculptor
covered with records of the pomp and pride
of princes, more purely national memorials had
found their place upon the native rock, the most
convenient surfaces of which were smoothed for
this purpose. Where no such rock existed in the
situation required, a massive stone was raised by
artificial means and the record, whether referring
to a victory, a new boundary, or any other event
of national interest was engraved upon it. Such
memorials have been described by Hebrew writers
as aumad or ammod, literally, the lips of the people,
or, the words of the people, but actually meaning
a pillar. Records in this form and the early name
they bore account for the strange legends of mediaeval
times referring to speaking stones--a name
by which such monuments were probably still called
long after time had effaced the speaking record,
and the original purport of the defaced stone was
forgotten. In semi-barbarous epochs, like the era
which followed the partial extinction of Roman
civilization, popular curiosity and superstition combined
would seek to give a meaning to the name of
such 'speaking stones,' and as an example of the
legends which thus arose, the itinerarium cambriae
of Geraldus may be cited, in which a stone is mentioned
at St. David's as the 'speaking stone'
(lech lavar) which was said to call out when a dead
body was placed upon it. The most remarkable
rock inscriptions still remaining are those of Assyria
and Persia, but many national tablets of more
recent date are still in existence. For the execution
of such records and those of the palaces of
Egypt and Assyria, some kind of steel point must
have been used, as no softer substance would have
served to engrave them in granitic and basaltic
slabs with the sharpness they still exhibit, which
proves that the art of hardening steel, long thought
a comparatively modern invention, was known to
the ancient people of Asia and Africa."
A list of the various devices of different countries,
by which characters could be legibly portrayed with
a scratching implement, is best recapitulated by Mr.
Knight, who presents them in the following order:
"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 Ninevah 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 written deeds of biblical time were kept in various
styles of pottery (Jeremiah xxxii. 14). Handwriting
on tiles was common in Egypt, Assyria and
Palestine (Ezekiel iv. I). Such handwritings were on
tablets of terra-cotta or common baked clay bricks.
One of the kind was fashioned by inscribing directly
with a "stylus" on the clay, before baking. Another,
were "moulds" made from older inscriptions or duplicates
from the first kind.
The Hebrew term sepher, translated into English
means a "book," and some authorities claim it is derived
from the same root as the Greek <gr kefas>, a stone,
which would seem to point to engraved stones as the
earliest kinds of records. Indeed nearly all the passages
in the Five Books of Moses, in which writing is
mentioned, refer to records of this kind, or to tablets
of lead or wood, occasionally described as coated with
wax.
Long before the use of papyrus, or any like substance
was known as a material for writing on, thin
bricks were frequently utilized for such purposes.
The Chinese wrote on slips of bamboo which had
been previously scraped to be afterwards submitted to
intense heat which so hardened them, that a graver
would cut lines with the same facility, as could be
accomplished on soft metal like lead. These bamboo
tablets were joined together by means of cords made
of bark and when folded formed a "book." Different
nations adopted other modes in their preparation
of surfaces to engrave on. Many original
specimens have come down to us which present definite
evidence of the variety of materials and methods
employed in their manufacture.
Hilprecht, "Explorations in Bible Lands," 1903,
mentions many discoveries of such specimens. He
says that more than four thousand clay tablets were
discovered during the excavations of 1889 and 1900.
These relics call attention only to a very few
discoveries of this character. There were other explorers
who preceded Hilprecht in this direction, and
who with him have thus secured tangible evidence
which fully confirms all that has been said about the
employment of the most ancient of writing instruments,
the "stylus."
The diamond is also to be classified under the head
of "scratching implements" and many historical
incidents are recorded of its use. One of the most
interesting relates to Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen
Elizabeth and to be found in Scott's "Kenilworth."
Sir Walter, using his diamond ring, wrote on a pane
of glass in her summer-house at Greenwich:
"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall."
The maiden Queen adding the words:
"If thy mind fail thee, do not climb at all."
Biblical mention of the diamond, employed as a pen,
is found in Jeremiah xvii. 1.
"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron,
and with the point of a diamond."
It has not always been possible to decipher and interpret
the character values of the most ancient hieroglyphics
or picture writings inscribed on bricks, stone
and metal slabs, and the Egyptian monuments. The
means to do so were furnished as the result of a very
fortunate accident or "find."
A French artillery officer in 1799 while excavating
the foundations for a fortification near the Rosetta
mouth of the Nile, found a curious black tablet of
stone. On it were engraved three inscriptions, each
of different characters and dialects.
The first of the three inscriptions was in hieroglyphic,
then unreadable; the second in demotic or
shorter script, also unknown, and the third in a living
language pertaining to the time of Ptolemy Epiphanes,
who reigned about 200 B. C.
This relic of antiquity is called the Rosetta stone.
Jean Francois Champollion, who with Dr. Thomas
Young studied the intricacies of these writings, first
established the fact that the three inscriptions on this
stone were translations of each other. Dr. Young's
investigations caused him to study the language included
in the second inscription, and made his deductions,
it is said, "by dint of thousands of scientific
guesses, all but a few of which were eliminated by
tests which he invented and applied; he at last discovered
and put together the set of fundamental principles
that govern the ancient writings."
Champollion, however, began at the bottom and
having successfully translated the LIVING language,
established a "key" or alphabet. Hence it became
possible, although requiring some years, to solve the
mystery of writings of 4000 or more years old.
Champollion pursued his discoveries so thoroughly
in this direction as to be able to complete in 1829 an
Egyptian vocabulary and grammar.
The Rosetta stone after remaining in the possession
of the French for many years was captured by the
English on the defeat of the French forces in Egypt
and is now in the British museum.
As writing with liquid colors on papyrus or analogous
materials which could be used in the form of rolls,
gradually came into vogue, the calamus or reed pen,
pencil brush (hair pencil), or the juncas, a pen formed
from a kind of cane, were more or less employed.
The "calamus" followed the "brush," just as
phonographic writing which denotes arbitrary sounds
or the language of symbols, came after the picture or
ideographic writing.
The places where the calamus grew and the modes
of preparing them are variously discussed by different
ancient and modern writers. Some claim that the
best reeds for pen purposes formerly grew near
Memphis on the Nile, near Cnidus of Caria, in Asia
Minor, and in Armenia. Those grown in Italy were
estimated to have been of but poor quality. Chardin
calls attention to a kind to be found, "in a large fen
or tract of soggy land supplied with water by the
river Helle, a place in Arabia formed by the 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." 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 manure
heap dries up the pith and hardens the cane. The
pens were about the size of the largest swan's quills.
They were cut and slit like a quill pen but with
much larger nibs.
In the far East the calamus is still used, the best
being gathered in the month of March, near Aurac,
on the Persian Gulf, and still prepared after the old
method of immersing them for about six months in
fermenting manure which coats them with a sort of
dark varnish and the darker their color the more
they are prized.
The "brush" also holds its career of usefulness,
more especially in China and Japan.
The earliest examples of reed pen writing are the
ancient rolls of papyrus which have been found
buried with the Egyptian dead. Some of these old
relics of antiquity are claimed to have been prepared
fully twenty centuries or more before the
Christian era.
The "reed" pen for ink writing held almost undisputed
sway until the sixth century after the Christian
era, when the quill (penna) came into vogue.
Reed pens preserved in excellent condition were
found in the ruins of Herculaneum.
"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.