A scroll (from the Old French escroe or escroue), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. [1]
A scroll (from the Old French escroe or escroue), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. [1]
A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyrus or parchment glued together at the edges. Scrolls may be marked divisions of a continuous roll of writing material. The scroll is usually unrolled so that one page is exposed at a time, for writing or reading, with the remaining pages rolled and stowed to the left and right of the visible page. Text is written in lines from the top to the bottom of the page. Depending on the language, the letters may be written left to right, right to left, or alternating in direction (boustrophedon).
Scrolls were the first form of editable record keeping texts, used in Eastern Mediterranean ancient Egyptian civilizations. Parchment scrolls were used by the Israelites among others before the codex or bound book with parchment pages was invented by the Romans, which became popular around the 1st century AD. [2] Scrolls were more highly regarded than codices until well into Roman times.
The ink used in writing scrolls had to adhere to a surface that was rolled and unrolled, so special inks were developed. Even so, ink would slowly flake off scrolls.
Shorter pieces of parchment or paper are called rolls or rotuli , although usage of the term by modern historians varies with periods. Historians of the classical period tend to use roll instead of scroll. Rolls may still be many meters or feet long, and were used in the medieval and Early Modern period in Europe and various West Asian cultures for manuscript administrative documents intended for various uses, including accounting, rent-rolls, legal agreements, and inventories. A distinction that sometimes applies is that the lines of writing in rotuli run across the width of the roll (that is to say, are parallel with any unrolled portion) rather than along the length, divided into page-like sections. Rolls may be wider than most scrolls, up to perhaps 60 cm or two feet wide. Rolls were often stored together in a special cupboard on shelves.
A special Chinese form of short book, called the "whirlwind book", consists of several pieces of paper bound at the top with bamboo and then rolled up. [3]
In Scotland, the term scrow was used from about the 13th to the 17th centuries for scroll, writing, or documents in list or schedule form. There existed an office of Clerk of the Scrow (Rotulorum Clericus) meaning the Clerk of the Rolls or Clerk of the Register. [4]
The codex form of the book—that is, folding a scroll into pages, which made reading and handling the document much easier—appears during the Roman period. Stemming from a passage in Suetonius' Divus Julius (56.6), legend has it that Julius Caesar was the first to fold scrolls, concertina-fashion, for dispatches to his forces campaigning in Gaul. But the precise meaning of the passage is by no means clear. As C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat point out, the idea that "Julius Caesar may have been the inventor of the codex... is indeed a fascinating proposition; but in view of the uncertainties surrounding the passage, it is doubtful whether any such conclusion can be drawn". [5] What the evidence of surviving early codices does make clear is that Christians were among the earliest to make widespread use of the codex. Several Christian papyrus codices known to us date from the second century, including at least one generally accepted as being no later than A.D. 150. "All in all, it is impossible to believe that the Christian adoption of the codex can have taken place any later than circa A.D. 100 (it may, of course, have been earlier)". [6] There were certainly practical reasons for the change. Scrolls were awkward to read if a reader wished to consult material at opposite ends of the document. Further, scrolls were written only on one side, while both sides of the codex page were used.
Eventually, the folds were cut into sheets, or "leaves", and bound together along one edge. The bound pages were protected by stiff covers, usually of wood enclosed with leather. Codex is Latin for a "block of wood": the Latin liber, the root of "library", and the German Buch, the source of "book", both refer to wood. The codex was not only easier to handle than the scroll, but it also fit conveniently on library shelves. The spine generally held the book's title, facing out, affording easier organization of the collection. The surface on which the ink was applied was kept flat, not subjected to weakening by the repeated bending and unbending that scrolls undergo as they are alternately rolled up for storage and unrolled for reading, which creates physical stresses in both the papyrus and the ink of scrolls.
The term codex technically refers only to manuscript books — those that, at one time, were handwritten. More specifically, a codex is the term used primarily for a bound manuscript from Roman times up through the Middle Ages.
From the fourth century on, the codex became the standard format for books, and scrolls were no longer generally used. After the contents of a parchment scroll were copied in codex format, the scroll was seldom preserved. The majority that did survive were found by archaeologists in burial pits and in the buried trash of forgotten communities. [7]
Modern technology may be able to assist in reading ancient scrolls. In January 2015, computer software may be making progress in reading 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls, computer scientists report. After working for more than 10 years on unlocking the contents of damaged Herculaneum scrolls, researchers may be able to progress towards reading the scrolls, which cannot be physically opened. [8]
The codex was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term "codex" is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin and was expensive and not readily available, so, in the interest of economy, a page was often re-used by scraping off the previous writing. In colloquial usage, the term palimpsest is also used in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another; for example, a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved.
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs and young calves.
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
The Codex Sinaiticus, designated by siglum א [Aleph] or 01, δ 2, also called Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonical books, and the Greek New Testament, with both the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas included. It is written in uncial letters on parchment. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible, and contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. It is a historical treasure, and using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the mid-fourth century.
The Codex Vaticanus, designated by siglum B or 03, δ 1, is a Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 4th century.
The Codex Alexandrinus, designated by the siglum A or 02, δ 4, is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, written on parchment. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the fifth century. It contains the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four Great uncial codices. Along with Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible.
The Vergilius Vaticanus, also known as Vatican Virgil, is a Late Antique illuminated manuscript containing fragments of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics. It was made in Rome in around 400 CE, and is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid. It is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. It aims to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book can reveal its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of such evidence can leave valuable clues about the nature of a particular book.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
The conservation and restoration of illuminated manuscripts is the care and treatment of illuminated manuscripts which have cultural and historical significance so that they may be viewed, read, and studied now and in the future. It is a specialty case of the conservation and restoration of parchment within the field of conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera.
In typography, a margin is the area between the main content of a page and the page edges. The margin helps to define where a line of text begins and ends. When a page is justified the text is spread out to be flush with the left and right margins. When two pages of content are combined next to each other, the space between the two pages is known as the gutter. The top and bottom margins of a page are also called "head" and "foot", respectively. The term "margin" can also be used to describe the edge of internal content, such as the right or left edge of a column of text.
A rotulus or rotula, often referred to as a "vertical roll," is a long and narrow strip of writing material, historically papyrus or parchment, that is wound around a wooden axle or rod. Rotuli are unwound vertically so that the writing runs parallel to the rod, unlike the other kind of roll, called a scroll, whose writing runs perpendicular to the rod in multiple columns.
Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers along an edge with a thick needle and strong thread. One can also use loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs, but they last for a shorter time. Next, one encloses the bound stack of paper in a cover. Finally, one places an attractive cover onto the boards, and features the publisher's information and artistic decorations.
The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls discovered in the 18th century in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. They had been carbonized when the villa was engulfed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to books.
A scroll is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. The history of scrolls dates back to ancient Egypt. In most ancient literate cultures scrolls were the earliest format for longer documents written in ink or paint on a flexible background, preceding bound books; rigid media such as clay tablets were also used but had many disadvantages in comparison. For most purposes scrolls have long been superseded by the codex book format, but they are still produced for some ceremonial or religious purposes, notably for the Jewish Torah scroll for use in synagogues.
PHerc. Paris. 4 is a carbonized scroll of papyrus, dating to the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. Part of a corpus known as the Herculaneum papyri, it was buried by hot-ash in the Roman city of Herculaneum during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It was subsequently discovered in excavations of the Villa of the Papyri from 1752–1754. Held by the Institut de France in its rolled state, it is now known to be a cornerstone example of non-invasive reading, where in February 2024, an announcement was made that the scroll's contents can be unveiled with the use of non-invasive imaging and machine learning artificial intelligence, paving the way towards the decipherment and scanning of other Herculaneum papyri and otherwise heavily damaged texts.
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