The Origins

of the
Book

By Emily MacMillan
Printed September 2020
Windsor Castle
City and Guilds Level 3
 The Origins of the Book

Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. The Invention of the Book 2
3. Parchment: Tough and Ready 7
4. Palm Leaf Manuscripts 12
5. Paper: its Ancient and Modern History 14
6. Conclusion 17
References 18
 Introduction

Thousands of years Before Christ, ancient civilisations were

using visual imagery as a means of communication, evidence of
which has survived throughout Africa. Prehistoric hunting
communities living west of the Nile river produced rock
paintings which still can be found scattered throughout the
desert. With the development of this method of
communication is thought to have come the eventual invention
of one of the world's oldest writing systems. From the creation
of new writing systems came the need for materials on which to
write upon, and so in different parts of the world, some of the
world's most important inventions were made which now form
the history of the book.
These inventions gave ancient civilisations a way to ensure
that their empires, legends, and great discoveries would never
be forgotten. From the first writing systems through to the first
books printed on paper, each of these civilisations played a
tremendous part in creating stepping-stones between the first
book, to the codex we use today without even thinking about.
Though scattered throughout the world, these inventions form
a timeline of events which came to sculpt the future, now our
history; without these inventions, one can only imagine what
our world would be like.
So many of us have never once thought about where our
books and paper ever came from, but the history of two of the
world's greatest inventions begins long before one could
imagine, thousands of years ago.

1
 The Invention of the Book

Books as we know them now, in codex form, were invented

in Julius Caesar’s era during the last 100 years BC. The
Romans made precursors of the parchment codex from
wooden tablets with wax-filled recesses; the diptych and
triptych were comprised of two (diptych) or three (triptych)
leaves of wood or even ivory, which were laced together at one
edge with rope. It is speculated that Julius Caesar could have
even been the first Roman to bind pages into codex form,
converting papyrus from scroll to codex and thus making the
first notebook.

Figure 1: Roman wax tablet

2
 While books in codex form were invented by the Romans in
the last century BC, the first actual book was invented in
ancient Iran. Mesopotamia was a region surrounding the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East, now parts of Iran,
Syria, and Iraq. The first city was founded here around 5400
BC, the city of Eridu. As well as the first city, many more ‘firsts’
were made here; the first examples of architectural stonework,
the invention of the wheel, mathematics, maps, and the
invention of writing. These developments are what earned this
ancient region its title in history as the Cradle of Civilisation,
and there are many more inventions and creations which can
be credited to this part of the world.

“A codex is always a book, but a book is not always a codex.

For example, rolls, scrolls, and some types of tablets are
considered books but not codices. A pamphlet, whether from
antiquity or printed yesterday, is both a book and a codex.”
-Julia Miller, Book Conservator, University of Michigan

In the city of Uruk, located in the region of Sumer, the clay

tablet was invented several hundred years after the invention
of the first writing system. Clay tablets have been found in
varying sizes- they tended to be no larger than an A6 or
‘pocket-sized’ booklet and could be as small as around two
inches in height. Before clay tablets, small clay tokens were
used as a form of currency. These tokens were inscribed with
the image of an animal and given to the farmer in exchange for
the depicted animal being sold. A theory was put forward
stating that clay tablets developed from these tokens, yet there
is insufficient evidence to prove this could be the case.

3
Figure 2: Clay cuneiform inscribed tablet from the Pergamon Museum,
Berlin
4
 Clay tablets were first used around 3400 BC, inscribed in
proto-cuneiform, the earliest form of the first ever writing
system, Cuneiform. It is not a language, but a writing system
with no alphabet. It works by using symbols to represent a
sound, rather than one letter. Since it is a writing system,
cuneiform was used by speakers of different languages, which
has led to it having many variants over the last 3000 years.
Today, less than 300 people can read cuneiform, because over
the past few thousand years it has changed so much as it was
passed down through generations, until it was eventually lost
and forgotten. Following excavations headed by English
archaeologist Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) in the early
1840s, cuneiform was rediscovered, and the text was
deciphered in the late 1840s. In 1872, scholar and translator
George Smith deciphered The Epic of Gilgamesh, a feat which
allowed the interpretation of other cuneiform tablets.
While the efforts to translate cuneiform were underway, the
world seems to have been much more involved and infatuated
by the excavations and discoveries in Egypt. In 1798 Napoleon
Bonaparte arrived in Egypt, which was at that time an
unexplored and unknown land. During the Georgian and
Victorian eras, Egypt and its history became of increasing
fascination around the world, with it becoming trendy for the
wealthy to collect objects and mummies taken from their
resting places.
During Napoleon’s exploration of Egypt, the Rosetta Stone
was discovered, which was sent to Cairo where the Greek text
was translated. With one of the three texts translated, the
French lost Egypt to the British, and so the Rosetta Stone was
transported back to Britain to be displayed in the British

5
Museum. The hieroglyphic text was cracked in the 1820s by
Jean-Francois Champollion, and finally the mysterious text
was no longer a mystery. The earliest inscription of hieroglyphs
dates to 3400 BC, while the latest date to 396 AD at a temple in
Philae.
It is not known where hieroglyphs came from, however the
use of this script resulted in the need for some format for the
texts to be written on, and so the scroll was invented. The
oldest papyrus scroll was found in an Egyptian tomb in 1937
and has been dated to circa 3000 BC, which closely follows the
clay tablet invention in Mesopotamia a few hundred years
prior. Papyrus was first manufactured around 4000 BC, and
the plant itself had multiple uses for the ancient Egyptians. The
Cyperus Papyrus plant has a thick stem and was used whole to
make thick cables or stripped to make thinner ropes.
It is possible that the idea for papyrus came from woven
papyrus mats, but there is no ancient account of its invention.
Sheets of papyrus were joined to create scrolls, and the
Egyptians also invented the ink which was used to write the
texts with. The scroll was a great success and was the favoured
text format for thousands of years, and the famous Book of the
Dead was typically copied onto scrolls which were buried with
the deceased. Due to the laborious process of making papyrus
scrolls, wooden writing tablets were used for casual
correspondence instead. These wooden tablets were so thin
that they could be stitched together or folded, and a collection
of such tablets were found near where part of Hadrian’s Wall
once stood, at a Roman outpost called Vindolanda. While
papyrus was immensely popular and incredibly useful, as time
progressed and rivalries grew between civilisations, it was its
popularity which would turn out to be part of the reason why a
new writing material came to be invented.
6
 Parchment: Tough and Ready

Though the scroll was popular for a few thousand years, it

began to go out of style following the invention of parchment
between 200-100 BC. The Library of Pergamon (now in
western Turkey) was founded by King Eumenes and the
Library of Alexandria was founded by Ptolemy of Egypt, and
the two libraries were rivals to become the largest. This rivalry
caused Ptolemy to decide to ban the export of papyrus from
Egypt to Turkey, leaving the library of Pergamon with no
materials with which to expand the collection. King Eumenes
ordered his subjects to go out and create a new writing
material, and so parchment was invented.
The Pergamenes were not the first to write on leather, in fact
there are records of leather having been used for thousands of
years prior as a writing material, but they were the creators of
the methods used to make parchment from animal skins.
Following this invention, the Library of Pergamon expanded
and parchment making spread, and over a few hundred years
scroll making diminished. Parchment is still made in the same
way today, using the same method of soaking, dehairing,
stretching and drying the skin. Now it is a rare craft, with just
one parchment maker left in the United Kingdom.
The Romans, having already been using wax-filled wooden
tablets and the thin wooden tablets they could stitch together,
began to substitute parchment for these wooden leaves. This
resulted in the prototype for the modern book, creating the
first manuscripts. Parchment notebooks were made for use as
account books, letters, and notes. The Latin poet Martial was
7
the first to record Roman use of the codex, having used this
format for his literary works dating to the late first century AD.
The scroll was still in use primarily for religious works until the
fourth century, but as it steadily became less popular the codex
began to thrive in the background.
From as early as the second century BC, early Christians
known as the Copts were using a method of binding called
Coptic binding. This format of binding involved sewing
multiple sections of papyrus together and began with using
boards made from laminated papyrus, but eventually wooden
boards were also in use by the fourth century as well as using
leather to cover the book. The oldest codices ever found are the
Nag Hammadi codices, which were discovered in 1945.

Figure 3: The Nag Hammadi Codices

8
 They were found buried under boulders near the town of Nag
Hammadi in Upper Egypt and consist of 13 volumes of Gnostic
Christian gospels. The reason for their burial was likely that
Gnostic Christian teachings had been declared heretic by
orthodox Christianity, so the Gnostic gospels were
controversial at that time.
The Nag Hammadi codices provide an incredibly valuable
insight into the materials and methods in use at the time they
were made; they have papyrus boards, leather thongs at the
head and tail for ties, and a wrapping band on the fore edge.
They have been dated to the fourth century AD, but there is
still some debate regarding the texts’ original composition as
scholars have dated the texts to the early-mid second century.
The Nag Hammadi codices appear to be the first instance of
sections or quires being made and sewn together; while the
Romans had been using the codex around the first century, it is
unknown how they were composed since no examples have
survived.
Coptic binding developed over the centuries, with multiple
sections became the favoured format by the early Christians for
their religious texts. This binding style was in use up to the
eleventh century, having also been used in Ethiopia, with a very
distinctive sewing style having developed. The link stitch style
of sewing involves sewing the first section by looping the
thread through holes in the board, then continuing to sew the
whole textblock by looping the thread around the thread from
the previous section, creating linked sewing stations on the
spine. There are no sewing supports such as cord or tapes, and
with the linked threads forming the supports the binding is
flexible.

9
 Another signature feature of Coptic and Ethiopian bindings
is the sewn headbands, which extend to the board edges. Holes
are made a good distance in from the very edge of the board, so
as to avoid splitting the board by making the holes, and the
endbands are sewn to produce a linked braid extending from
one board to the other. These endbands would have served
both a practical and aesthetical purpose, as they not only would
have suited the book well and looked nice, they would have also
protected each end of the spine and kept the book secure at the
head and tail.

Figure 4: Coptic Style Endband

10
 Originally, Coptic and Ethiopian bindings would have had
boards made from laminated papyrus, as the Nag Hammadi
codices do, but over time they evolved to have wooden boards
with holes made in the edges to sew through in order to attach
the boards. There would often have been some form of tie or
clasp at the fore edge to keep the book closed.
While Coptic binding was becoming increasingly common,
religious texts were being copied onto palm leaves and made
into manuscripts in South India and Sri Lanka in the first few
hundred years AD. Similar to the Coptic bindings, which were
primarily made from papyrus sheets, these South Asian
manuscripts were made with treated palm leaves. While the
materials used were similar, however, the similarities between
the two ended at that.

11
 Palm Leaf Manuscripts

These unique manuscripts were made from two main types

of palm tree leaves, palmyra and talipot. The palmyra leaf is
thicker and not flexible, which means it turns brittle with time,
but the talipot leaf is thinner and more flexible, making it more
durable and last longer.
Palm leaf manuscripts are oblong in shape, held together
with two braided cords and have wooden boards in varying
degrees of embellishment dependent on the contents. They can
have illuminated leaves, and ornate boards with inset gems and
carvings. Decorative bindings would have been for important
contents, and gifts to people of high or royal status. The palm
leaf itself is prepared by boiling the leaf, which disrupts the cell
membranes, softening the cuticle and cell walls. Once dry, a
stylus is used to inscribe into the leaf and ink is then rubbed
over the surface with a rag. The ink stains the areas where the
text has been inscribed with the stylus, so when the leaf is
cleaned the text remains visible.
In Sri Lanka, the texts were written in Sinhalese or Tamil
and contained religious sutras. While many have made their
way into collections all over the world, the largest collection is
in Eastern India at the Odisha State Museum, with 37,273
manuscripts. Buddhist monks took this idea of bookbinding
through to Persia, Afghanistan, Iran, and China, where just two
hundred years later the invention of paper would change the
future of bookbinding.

12
Figure 5: a highly embellished palm leaf manuscript
from the British Library

13
 Paper: its Ancient and Modern History

In China, the art of papermaking was reinvented in circa 105

AD by Cai Lun, also known as Ts’ai Lun. The word ‘reinvented’
is key, however; evidence found at different locations in China
proves that papermaking had existed hundreds of years before
Cai Lun. One example of such evidence is a small piece of paper
discovered in Fangmatan, an archaeological site near Tianshui
City in the Gansu Province, northwest China. This scrap of
paper was determined to be around 250 years older than Cai
Lun’s reinvention. Its uneven fibre distribution and rough
texture are traits of the ancient papermaking methods that are
still in use by minorities in Tibet, Yunnan and Xinjiang when
making Kongming lanterns.

Figure 6: The Fangmatan Paper14

The Fangmatan paper was made with the ‘paper-pouring’
process, where the pulp is poured into a fixed mould, as
opposed to Cai Lun’s technique of dipping the mould into the
paper pulp.
Cai Lun was responsible for the reinvention of the
papermaking process, meaning that he had invented an easier
and more efficient way of producing paper. He used macerated
plant fibres such as hemp, tree bark, grass, and also old fishing
nets. His new way of making paper made it more accessible
and meant it could be produced on a larger scale, and as the art
of papermaking grew, a method of sizing the paper had been
developed by 700 AD. Papermaking spread through to Korea,
Japan, and eventually to the Middle East where the Arabs first
used rags for the raw materials to make paper. Gelatine sizing
made from animal hides, horns and hooves was being used in
1337, and by 1495 papermaking was being practised
throughout Europe. Parchment was still in use at this time,
though, with some of the first ever printed books having been
printed on parchment in the 1400s. Johann Gutenberg
invented movable type and produced the first printed books in
1455. Only 48 copies are known to have survived, 12 having
been printed on vellum and 36 being on paper.
The papermaking industry had taken Europe by storm by the
late 1400s, and it became huge over the next few hundred
years. With this being the case, it became necessary to find a
way to mass produce paper. So, when the Fourdrinier machine
was invented in 1799, it revolutionised the papermaking
industry. The Fourdrinier machine could make paper, paper-
board and other fibreboards, all still with recycled materials
from cotton and linen rags.

15
Forty years after the invention of the Fourdrinier machine,
wood pulp was first made in Germany, the use of which became
more extensive in around 1870.

Figure 7: The Fourdrinier machine

Following the invention of the new methods of papermaking,

a solution was needed to resolve the issue of wood pulp paper’s
water absorbency, and sizing with rosin and alum was created
to stop ink from spreading during the printing process. Now
that the Fourdrinier machine was widely used and a much
more accessible material had been found with which to make
paper, the papermaking industry could grow over the next two
hundred years into the huge industry it is today. The invention
of the Fourdrinier machine paved the way for advances to be
made throughout the industrial revolution to make
papermaking better and faster, with modern machinery being
capable of making countless different kinds of paper for
numerous industries.

16
 In Conclusion

While there are still endless questions without answers about

the timeline of bookbinding history, the rich amount of history
that has survived all these thousands of years allows us in the
modern day to be able to understand some of the ‘how’s and
‘why’s, from centuries ago to thousands of years ago. The
inspiration for some of these ancient inventions may forever
remain a mystery, we may never know who exactly was
responsible for them, and the exact chronological order of
events may never be uncovered. However, despite the many
inevitable mysteries, it is still possible to trace back the
everyday materials that we use today in our offices, at home,
and in multiple industries, further back than one would think.
From the clay tablets of Mesopotamia to the first printed
parchment and paper books in Germany, the history of our
craft is one which has clearly been explored yet still leaves
much to the imagination.
The history of bookbinding provides a wonderful glimpse
into what life was like during the time periods of these famous
inventions; in the bookbinding industry, it is important to have
an understanding of why we do what we do and how everything
works, so to be able to go so far back into the history of a craft
which was created thousands of years ago is a true gift.

17
References

Websites:
- Brittanica
- Ancient.eu
- Kaogu.cn
- Historyofinformation.com
- Secret-bases.co.uk
- Gnosticismexplained.org
- Longreads.com
Images:
- Figure 1: Pinterest.com
- Figure 2: The Pergamon Museum, Emily MacMillan,
- Figure 3: Blogspot.com
- Figure 4: Emily MacMillan
- Figure 5: The British Library, Emily MacMillan
- Figure 6: Wikimedia
- Figure 7: Prepressure.com
Books:
- Cuneiform, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor
- A Little History of Archaeology, Brian Fagan

18