Читать книгу The Story of Paper-making - Frank O. Butler - Страница 4

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Full of dignity, significance, and truth is the noble conception which finds expression in Tennyson’s verse, that we are the heirs of the ages, the inheritors of all that has gone before us.

♦We are the heirs of the ages♦

Through countless cycles of time men have been struggling and aspiring; now “mounting up with wings, as eagles,” now thrown back to earth by the crushing weight of defeat, but always rising again, undaunted and determined. “The fathers have wrought, and we have entered into the reward of their labors.” We have profited by their striving and aspiration. All the wisdom of the past, garnered by patient toil and effort, all the wealth of experience gained by generations of men through alternating defeat and triumph, belongs to us by right of inheritance. It has been truly said, “We are what the past has made us. The results of the past are ourselves.”

♦Tradition untrustworthy♦

But to what agency do we owe the preservation of our inheritance? What conservator has kept our rich estate from being scattered to the four winds of heaven? For the wealth that is ours to-day we are indebted in large measure to man’s instinctive desire, manifested in all ages, to perpetuate his knowledge and achievements. Before the thought of a permanent record had begun to take shape in men’s minds, oral tradition, passing from father to son, and from generation to generation, sought to keep alive the memory of great achievements and valorous deeds. But tradition proved itself untrustworthy. Reports were often imperfect, misleading, exaggerated. Through dull ears, the spoken words were received into minds beclouded by ignorance, and passed on into the keeping of treacherous memories. As the races advanced in learning and civilization, they realized that something more permanent and accurate was necessary; that without written records of some sort there could be little, if any, progress, since each generation must begin practically where the preceding one had begun, and pass through the same stages of ignorance and inexperience.

♦Hieroglyphic records♦

In this strait, men sought help from Nature, and found in the huge rocks and bowlders shaped by her mighty forces a means of perpetuating notable events in the histories of nations and the lives of individuals. From the setting up of stones to commemorate great deeds and solemn covenants, it was but a step to the hewing of obelisks, upon which the early races carved their hieroglyphs, rude pictures of birds and men, of beasts and plants. As early as four thousand years before Christ, these slender shafts of stone were reared against the deep blue of the Egyptian sky, and for ages their shadows passed with the sun over the restless, shifting sands of the desert. Most of the ancient obelisks have crumbled to dust beneath Time’s unsparing hand, but a few fragmentary specimens are still in existence, while the British Museum is so fortunate as to be in possession of one shaft of black basalt that is in perfect condition. A part of it is covered with writing, a part with bas-reliefs. In Egypt these hieroglyphs were employed almost exclusively for religious writings—a purpose suggested by the derivation of the word itself, which comes from the Greek, ieros, a priest, and glypha, a carving.

♦Inscriptions on stone and clay♦

As the obelisk had taken the place of the rude stones and unwieldy bowlders which marked man’s first effort to solve an ever-recurring problem, so it in turn was superseded. The temples were sacred places, and especially fitted to become the repositories of the records that were to preserve for coming generations the deeds of kings and priests. Accordingly, the pictured stories of great events were graven on stone panels in the temple walls, or on slabs or tablets of the same enduring material. Then came a forward step to the easier and cheaper method of writing on soft clay. The monarchs, not being obliged to take into consideration questions of ease or economy, continued to make use of the stone tablets, but private individuals usually employed clay, not only for literary and scientific writings, but in their business transactions as well. A careful baking, either by artificial heat or in the burning rays of a tropic sun, rendered the clay tablets very enduring, so that many which have been dug from ancient ruins are now in a remarkable state of preservation, bearing letters and figures as clear as any of the inscriptions on marble, stone, or metal that have come to us from the splendid days of Greece or Rome. The people of Assyria and Chaldea recorded almost every transaction, whether public or private in character, upon tablets of clay, forming thus a faithful transcript of their daily lives and occupations, which may be read to-day by those who hold the key; thus it is we bridge the gulf of centuries. From the ruins of ancient Nineveh and Babylon, records of almost every sort have been unearthed, all inscribed on indestructible terra-cotta. There are bank-notes and notes of hand, deeds of property, public records, statements of private negotiations, and memoranda of astronomical observations. The life in which they played a part has passed into history; the once proud and mighty cities lie prostrate, and upon their ruins other cities have risen, only to fall as they fell. The terra-cotta to which they committed their records is all that is left, and the tablets that were fashioned and inscribed so long ago give to us the best histories of Chaldea, Babylonia, and Assyria.

♦Assyrian, Babylonian and Chaldean records♦

One of the largest collections of these clay-writings is now in the British Museum and was taken from a great edifice in Assyria, which was probably the residence of Sennacherib. Several series of narratives are comprehended in the collection; one referring to the language, legends, and mythology of the Assyrians; another recording the story of creation, in which “Water-deep” is said to be the creator of all forms of life then in existence, while a third relates to the deluge and the story of the Assyrian Moses. But however interesting these facts may be in themselves, we refer to them only by way of illustration, since we are dealing not so much with the writing itself as with the material on which writing was done.

♦Inscriptions on prisms♦

Another form of tablet, a somewhat singular variation it may seem, was in use among the Assyrians at a very early date. This was a prism, having either six or eight sides, and made of exceedingly fine terra-cotta. Such prisms were frequently deposited by the Assyrian kings at the corners of temples, after having been inscribed with accounts of the notable events in their lives, interspersed with numerous invocations. Apparently the custom was similar to that followed at the present day, and the ancient Assyrian tablets no doubt served the same purpose as the records, newspapers, and documents that are now deposited in the corner-stones of public or other important buildings. The prisms used as tablets varied in length from a foot and a half to three feet, and were covered very closely with small writing. That the writers’ endeavor was to make the most of the space at their disposal is suggested by the fact that upon a prism found in the ruins of the ancient city of Ashur the inscriptions are so crowded that there are thirty lines in the space of six inches, or five lines to the inch. The prism recites the valiant deeds of Tiglath-Pileser I., who reigned from 1120 to 1100 BC, and undertook campaigns against forty-two other nations and their kings. He was a monarch whose very name inspired terror among the surrounding peoples, and his reign was filled with stirring events and brilliant achievements. ♦Economy of space♦ Small wonder that it was necessary to crowd the inscriptions upon the prism! Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” in an account of the writings that have come down to us from the earliest days of the world’s recorded history, has this to say: “The clay tablets are both numerous and curious. They are of various sizes, ranging from nine inches long by six and a half wide to an inch and a half long by an inch wide, or even less. Sometimes they are entirely covered by writings, while at others they exhibit on a portion of their surface impressions of seals, mythological emblems, and the like. Some thousands have been recovered. Many are historical, and still more are mythological.” Their use in writing and drawing was almost universal, and we read that the prophet Ezekiel, when dwelling with “them of the captivity at Telabib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar,” was commanded, “Take thee a tile and lay it before thee, and portray upon it the city, even Jerusalem.” (Ezekiel iv. 1.)

We get a glimpse of another side of that ancient life in a tablet of Nile clay, preserved in the British Museum, which is one of the earliest specimens of writing now in existence. It is a proposal of marriage, and was written about 1530 BC, more than thirty-four hundred years ago, by a Pharaoh asking the hand of a daughter of the Babylonian king. Forty years later, in 1491 BC, the ten commandments were graven on tablets of stone.

♦The works of Homer♦

In the early efforts of men to find a means of preserving in lasting and convenient form the records of their lives and achievements, some queer materials were pressed into service. Plates of metal were used, even the precious gold and silver being employed for the purpose. Skins of animals, tanned to a sort of leather, found favor among many peoples, while their bones, and even their intestines, were by no means disdained. The works of Homer, preserved in one of the great Egyptian libraries in the days of the Ptolemies, were written in letters of gold on the skins of serpents. Ivory was used, also wood and the bark of trees. In the early days of Rome, the reports of notable events were engraved on wooden tablets, which were then exposed to view in public places, and citizens of all classes, mingling freely, according to custom, in the great Forum that was the center of the city’s life, were easily and quickly informed of the important happenings of the day. The greatest defect in this method was remedied when, later on, wax was used to form a surface upon the wood, thus admitting of corrections and erasures, and making it possible to use the same table indefinitely, simply by scraping off the coating after it had served its purpose, and supplying other coatings as they were needed. But the first real advance toward modern writing materials came in the use of the leaves of olive, palm, poplar, and other trees, which were prepared by being cut in strips, soaked in boiling water, and then rubbed over wood to make them soft and pliable.

♦Old materials necessarily discarded♦

It will be readily understood, however, that these crude materials and primitive methods could not long keep pace with the steady march of progress. The peoples of the earth were increasing rapidly; they were advancing in the arts and sciences, and in the experiences that inspire thought, poetry, and philosophy; they had a heritage of knowledge to which they were constantly adding, while business transactions, together with other deeds worthy of record, had greatly multiplied. It was but natural that the materials which had once been entirely adequate should now be discarded as cumbersome and unfitted to the new conditions. The sands in the hour-glass were beginning to run golden; time was taking on a value unknown before. A deed of land written in clay and put away to bake might answer the purpose when real-estate transfers were infrequent and attended with much ceremony. A clay tablet might serve in a marriage proposal by a king who had the power to meet and vanquish all rivals, but terra-cotta was not suited either for the record of numerous and rapid business transactions or for the writing of books. The biography of one man, or a single treatise in philosophy, would have required a whole building, while a library of modern dimensions, as to the number of books, would probably have left little room in a city for the dwellings of its inhabitants.

♦Discovery of papyrus♦

What was to take the place of the old and cumbersome materials? Even at a very early date men were asking this question, and it was the good fortune of Egypt to be able to give answer. Along the marshy banks of the Nile grew a graceful water-plant, now almost extinct, which was peculiarly fitted to meet the new demands, as we shall see in the succeeding chapter. The discovery of its value led to an extensive industry, through which the land of the Pharaohs was enabled to take high rank in letters and learning, and, to maintain a position of wealth, dignity, power, and influence that otherwise would have been impossible, even in those remote days when printing was still many centuries beyond the thoughts or dreams of men.