Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Top

“Littera scripta manet, verbum ut inane perit” (The written letter remains, as the empty word perishes).—Latin Proverb.

We are now transported to a rock-hewn burial chamber of ancient Egypt. Within the chamber stands a stone sarcophagus containing the mummy of one who

“walked about (how strange a story!)

In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago.”

Our attention is at once attracted by the multitude of figures carved upon the stone coffin. A closer inspection reveals not mere ornament, but a series of rude pictures so arranged as to convey a meaning which the learned can interpret, and all can partly guess. The figures represent more or less clearly some familiar object—the rising sun, a bird, a fish, a human eye, a bowl, and so forth—and it is clear that these pictures tell the life-story of the person who lies buried within.

ISRAEL IN EGYPT. (From the painting by Sir E. J. Poynter, P.R.A. By permission of J. C. Hawkshaw, Esq.) To List

You perceive that the age to which this sarcophagus is ascribed has made a vast step forward in the march of civilization. It is on the highroad to what Mirabeau calls the first of the two greatest inventions of the human mind—the art of writing. The sands of long centuries will run out before the art is sufficiently advanced to record all the complex and countless dealings of men; but here we see it developed from its crude beginnings, and moving towards the triumph which awaits it in the future.

The cave man who scratched the outline of a familiar animal on a bone, or made rude drawings with coloured earths on smooth-surfaced stones, was the father of this wondrous art. Ages, however, passed away before his primitive mind glimpsed the idea that pictures could be made to communicate intelligence to men who dwelt afar off. Let us briefly recount the stages by which the human mind advanced to picture writing, and thence to the alphabet, that series of symbols which enables men to record everything that the mind can conceive and the tongue can utter.

Everybody remembers Robinson Crusoe setting up a post on the seashore and carving notches on it to record the flight of time. Very early in the history of the world similar devices were adopted to enable men to remember something which they did not wish to forget. This reckoning by notches has continued almost to our own time. Old cricketers still talk of a man scoring so many “notches,” and down to the last century the British Exchequer kept accounts by means of notched tallies or squared sticks of well-seasoned hazel or willow. The message-stick still used by the Australian black-fellow is notched in the presence of the messenger, each notch representing some particular point of the message which he is to convey. It is merely an aid to the memory, and without the verbal explanation of the messenger conveys little or no meaning.

Even to-day we see persons tie a knot in a handkerchief as an aid to memory. The use of knots for this purpose goes back to very early times. Herodotus tells us that when Darius bade his Ionians remain to guard the floating bridge over the Ister, he tied “sixty knots in a thong, saying, 'Men of Ionia... do ye keep this thong, and do as I shall say:—so soon as ye shall have seen me go forward against the Scythians, from that time begin and untie a knot on each day; and if within this time I am not here, and ye find that the days marked by the knots have passed by, then sail away to your own lands.'”

The quipu of the ancient Peruvians was a development of this simple device. It consisted of a main cord, to which were attached shorter cords of diverse colours, knotted at intervals with single or double knots, or combinations of single and double knots. By means of the cords and the knots, reckonings were made, the laws and annals of the Incas were preserved, orders were transmitted to the army, and biographies of deceased persons were recorded. So intricate, however, was the method of the quipu, that special officials, known as knot-officers, were required to interpret it, and even they were seldom able to elucidate its meaning without the assistance of those who had some memory of the matters recorded.

Thus we see that notches and knots, even in their most developed forms, could not transmit knowledge. They could merely recall to the memory of the man who made them things which he already knew. They did not supersede word of mouth, and so they could not serve the purpose of writing.

In the next stage we see pictures being used to communicate knowledge. A picture is drawn to suggest a thing or an action, and a series of such pictures affords information which he who runs may read, no matter what his particular form of speech may be. Pictorial writing was largely developed amongst the North American Indians, and continued amongst them down to modern times. Longfellow in a poem which relates the legends and traditions of the Red Men, and describes Hiawatha as their great culture-hero, tells us that—

“From his pouch he took his colours,

Took his paints of different colours;

On the smooth bark of a birch tree

Painted many shapes and figures—

Wonderful and mystic figures,

And each figure had a meaning,

Each some word or thought suggested ....

Life and Death he drew as circles—

Life was white, but Death was darkened;

Sun and moon and stars he painted,

Man and beast, and fish and reptile,

Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers.

For the earth he drew a straight line,

For the sky a bow above it,

White the space between for day-time,

Filled with little stars for night-time;

On the left a point for sunrise,

[Pg 28]On the right a point for sunset,

On the top a point for noon-tide,

And for rain and cloudy weather

Waving lines descending from it.

Footprints pointing towards a wigwam

Were a sign of invitation—

Were a sign of guests assembling;

Bloody hands with palms uplifted

Were a symbol of destruction—

Were a hostile sign and symbol ....

Thus it was that Hiawatha

In his wisdom taught the people

All the mysteries of painting,

All the art of Picture-writing,

On the smooth bark of the birch-tree,

On the white skin of the reindeer,

On the grave-posts of the village.”

The obelisks, tombs, and sarcophagi of the ancient Egyptians everywhere display writing which betrays its pictorial origin. As the Egyptians used some seventeen hundred pictorial signs in their writing, ability to portray these forms would require long training and some natural capacity. Even the production of a simple statement would involve much time and labour. Further, picture-writing at its best could never be explicit; nor could it exhibit abstract ideas, such as vice and virtue, time and space, health and sickness without the use of signs which were ambiguous to the untutored mind. For example, the bee became the symbol of kingship and industry, a roll of papyrus denoted knowledge, an ostrich feather, justice, and so on.

We have now arrived at the stage when the eye picture no longer suggests the thing, but becomes a symbol for a particular idea. Then comes the final and most momentous step, when the sign no longer calls up an object or an idea, but indicates a particular sound. Signs were made for each of the sounds in the language, and these sound-signs formed an alphabet. The old pictures became simplified into conventional signs which could be made easily and rapidly, and thus the art of writing was evolved, and the age of books began.

The changes briefly indicated above occupied many centuries, and in Egypt pictures and sound signs were used side by side for thousands of years. The Babylonians had, however, passed the picture stage long before the Egyptians, and had developed their cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters as far back as eight thousand years ago. Their clay tablets and cylinders, closely inscribed with writing, are to be found in every museum.

Whence comes our alphabet, the series of characters in which the noble works which make our literature the most glorious in the world have been written? The Phœnicians, those restless traders and colonists of the ancient world, derived their alphabet from the Hebrews who settled in Lower Egypt and adapted the Egyptian alphabet to their own needs. This Semitic alphabet was carried by the Phœnicians to the Greeks, who further modified it. Their colonists took it to Italy, and the Latins adopted twenty-one of their twenty-six letters. Rome in due time became the mistress of the world. Her armies and traders carried her civilization into every known land, and when she became the home of the Christian religion, her missionaries penetrated far and wide, and carried the learning of the mother city to the dark haunts of barbarism. The religious teachers of Rome brought the Roman alphabet to Britain, and it became, with the addition of three new signs, the alphabet which we write to-day.

Before closing this chapter, let us glance for a few moments at the materials on which ancient records were made. Probably the earliest inscriptions were scratched on stone or metal. The Ten Commandments given to Moses were graven on stone, and the Nicene Creed was similarly inscribed on silver by order of Pope Leo III. Prepared skins were also used, as the passage from “Hiawatha” reminds us. Another very early material for writing was the wood or bark of trees. It is interesting to note that the Latin liber, a book, signifies the bark of a tree, and that book originally meant a beech tree and beechen boards. The clay tablets and cylinders of Babylon have already been referred to.

The writing material specially associated with Egypt is the pith of the papyrus reed, which grew abundantly in ancient days on the banks of the Lower Nile. The inner rind of the reed was cut into thin strips, some long, some short. The long strips were placed on a board side by side, and across them the shorter strips were laid. The board was then placed in the Nile water, and the adhesive matter in the pith glued the strips together and formed a sheet, which when pressed, hammered, dried, and smoothed, assumed a surface fit for writing. Papyrus, thus made, continued to be the material of books until such time as the supply of reeds began to fail. Our word paper is derived from papyrus, and from the Greek name of the strips comes the word Bible, signifying the book.

Papyrus books were in the form of a long roll which might be 150 feet in length. As a rule, some twenty sheets of papyrus were joined together, and the place of each sheet was determined by its quality; for example, the first sheet was always the best, and was followed by the second best, the third best, and so on. The sheets were then rolled together, beginning with the worst sheet, and this arrangement made the strongest and best sheet the outer protection of the book. To this day the Books of the Law which are read in Jewish synagogues are inscribed on rolls.

A far more satisfactory material for the inscription and preservation of writing was parchment, the prepared skin of the sheep and the calf. The name of this substance contains its history. In the first half of the second century before Christ, the King of Pergamum conceived the laudable idea of founding a great library, but owing to the jealousy of the Ptolemies could not obtain for his copyists a sufficient supply of papyrus from Egypt. He was, therefore, thrown back on the old but superseded practice of using skins, which he caused to be washed, dressed, and rubbed smooth. Because such skins were first prepared at Pergamum they became known as parchment. Until the invention of printing the use of parchment was almost universal. Paper made from linen rags reduced to a pulp and poured out on a frame in a thin watery sheet which was dried and hardened by the action of heat, did not come into use in England until the reign of Edward the Third.

For keeping private accounts and for the writing of notes, wax tablets were used in all parts of Western Europe, even down to the days of Queen Elizabeth. Every one remembers the mention of such tablets in the New Testament—“They made signs to his father, how he would have him called. And he asked for a writing-table, and wrote, saying, 'His name is John.'” For the inscription and preservation of Roman wills, two or three of these tablets were joined together with a ring or hinge. Obviously they then resembled the modern book, and suggested a method of binding up leaves of parchment into a far more convenient and compact form than the awkward and bulky roll. It is said that the desire of Christians to possess the whole Bible in one volume led to the abandonment of the roll and the adoption of the modern form of book.

Phœbus Apollo. (From the painting by Briton Riviere, R.A. By permission of the Corporation of Birmingham.) [Phœbus Apollo was one of the great divinities of the Greeks. He was the sun-god who daily drove his flaming chariot across the sky. He was also the god of prophecy, song, and music, the patron of poets, and the leader of the choir of the Nine Muses.] To List