History of scrolls
A scroll (from the Old French escroe
or escroue) is a roll of papyrus,
parchment, or paper containing
writing.[1] 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;[2] 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been superseded by the codex book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.
Scroll of the Book of Esther,
Seville, Spain
Origins of the scroll
The oldest known scroll is the
Diary_of_Merer, which can be dated
to c. 2568 BCE in the reign of the
Pharaoh Khufu or Cheops due to its
contents. Scrolls were used by
many early civilizations before the
codex, or bound book with pages,
was invented by the Romans[3] and
popularized by Christianity.[4]
Nevertheless, scrolls were more
highly regarded than codices until
well into Roman times.
Eastern Mediterranean,
West Asia and Europe
Israel
Scrolls were used by the Hebrews to
record their religious texts, which
today is referred to as the Tanakh.
Some of these ancient scrolls are
known today, i.e., the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
Greece and Rome
Roman portraiture frescos from Pompeii, 1st century AD, depicting two different men wearing laurel
wreaths, one holding the rotulus, the other a volumen
Roman portraiture fresco of a young
man with a papyrus scroll, from
Herculaneum, 1st century AD
Scrolls were used by the ancient
Greeks. In Roman usage the scrolls
were written latitudinally, usually
placed on podiums with roll holders
from which the rolls were unwound.[5]
A vertically rolled form was also
used, called a rotulus.
The Romans eventually found the
scroll too cumbersome for lengthy
works and developed the codex,
which is the formal name for the
modern style of book, with
individual pages bound together.
Early Christian era
Scrolls continued to be used at
times during the Early Church era
until the Early Middle Ages, but
Christianity was an early adopter of
the codex. It is often thought that
this reflects the background in trade
of many early Christians, who were
used to codex notebooks, and less
attached to the form that was
traditional among the Roman elite
and religious Jews.
European Middle Ages
Scrolls virtually ceased to be used
for books and documents in Europe
during the Middle Ages, and were
reintroduced for rare use in official
treaties and other international
documents of great significance
during and after the Baroque Era of
the 17th century. These were usually
written on high quality vellum, and
stored in elaborate silver and gold
cases inscribed with names of
participants. Earlier examples were
written in Latin. Scrolls continued in
use for administrative and
accounting purposes all over
Europe. In English they were often
referred to as "rolls", hence the
Great Rolls of the English
Exchequer, and titles such as
Master of the Rolls (a senior judge),
still used in the 21st century. The
official copy of English, now British,
legislation was still printed on
vellum in a roll format and stored in
the Palace of Westminster until
2017, when the use of Vellum was
replaced with archival paper.[6] The
Exultet Scroll from Southern Italy
and Byzantine Joshua Scroll were
prestige objects that used the old
form in a revivalist spirit.
West and Central Asia
Scrolls continued in use longer in
the Islamic world, often elaborately
decorated in calligraphic writing that
included use of gold embossing and
pigments when used for the writing
of the Qur'an.
East Asia
Scrolls continued in use longer in
East Asian cultures like China, Korea
and Japan.
The Chinese invented and perfected
'Indian Ink' for use in writing,
including scrolls. Originally
designed for blacking the surfaces
of raised stone-carved
hieroglyphics, the ink was a mixture
of soot from pine smoke and lamp
oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey
skin and musk. The ink invented by
the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu
(2697 B.C.), became common by the
year 1200 B.C.
Later other formats came into use in
China, firstly the sutra or scripture
binding, a scroll folded concertina-
style, which avoids the need to
unroll to find a passage in the
middle. By about 1,000 CE, sheet-
based formats were introduced,
although scrolls continued to have a
place. Traditional painting and
calligraphy in East Asia is often still
performed on relatively short
latitudinal paper scrolls displayed
vertically as a hanging scroll on a
wall or horizontally and flat as a
handscroll.
Song Dynasty copy of the Wise and Benevolent Women, original by Gu Kaizhi, 13th century, Palace
Museum.
Replacement by the
codex
The codex was a new format for
reading the written word, consisting
of individual pages loosely attached
to each other at one side and bound
with boards or cloth. It replaced the
scroll over time because it
overcame at least seven problems
that limited the scroll's function and
readability. (1) Scrolls were relatively
expensive to produce. Codices
could easily be written and read on
both sides of the page, halving the
amount of paper or vellum required
to hold the same amount of content.
(2) Lengthy scrolls were bulky and
heavy, both because they required
double the writing surface, and
because they also required at least
one umbilicus (rolling stick) and a
scroll case for protection. The use
of codices with light paper or
leather covers reduced the size and
weight of the book by more than
half. (3) Codices were easier to
reproduce. It was possible to hold
open a codex with one hand and
copy text with the other. For early
Christendom this was an invaluable
asset, as the ability to mass
reproduce their gospels was in high
demand. (4) Codices were easier to
read. Scrolls were very long,
sometimes as long as ten meters.
This made them hard to hold open
and read, especially scrolls that
were inscribed horizontally and
unrolled vertically. (5) Codices were
easier to index and annotate. As a
scroll was continuous, without page
breaks, indexing and bookmarking
was impossible. Conversely, the
codex was easier to hold open,
separate pages made it possible to
index sections and mark a page. (6)
Codices were better protected. The
covers of a codex protected the
fragile pages better than scrolls.
This made the codex particularly
attractive for important religious
texts. (7) The ink on codices could,
in principle, last longer than the ink
on scrolls. The ink used in writing
scrolls had to adhere to a surface
that was constantly rolled and
unrolled, so special inks were
developed. Even so, ink would
slowly flake from scrolls. Codices
involved much less flexing of the
page, so they were less prone to this
problem.[7]
The codex began to replace the
scroll almost as soon as it was
invented. Early Medieval Christians
were some of the first to adopt the
codex over the scroll.[8] In Egypt by
the fifth century CE the codex
outnumbered the scroll or roll by ten
to one based on surviving examples,
and by the sixth century the scroll
had almost vanished from use as a
vehicle for literature.[9]
However, in other places the scroll
lingered. Monarchs used “statute
rolls” to record important legislation
until well into the Middle Ages.
Scrolls were also commonly used in
theater productions, a practice from
which the term “actor’s roll” was
coined.[10]
Modern era
Hanging scrolls of calligraphy on
display, Shanghai
Torah Scrolls are still used today in
Jewish religious observance with
almost insignificant changes
despite the thousands of years in
practice.
Some cultures use scrolls as
ceremonial texts or for decoration—
such as a hanging scroll—without
any obvious division of the text into
columns. In some scroll-using
cultures painted illustrations were
used as header decorations above
the text columns, either in a
continuous band or broken into
scenes above either a single or
double column of text.
One of the few modern texts the
original of which was written on
what is effectively a scroll is the
manuscript of Jack Kerouac's On
the Road, typed onto what he called
"the scroll", made of taped-together
sheets of paper. Although it was
more for utilitarian than ceremonial
purposes, the Marquis de Sade's
120 Days of Sodom, which he
intended to be the filthiest book
imaginable, is written on a scroll.
The verb "to scroll" is much used in
the age of screen displays—
computer displays, rolling credits in
films and so on—with the screen
filled with text moving (scrolling) up
or down or sideways, appearing at
one edge of the display and
disappearing at the other as if being
unrolled from one side of a scroll
and rolled up at the other.
See also
History of writing
History of books
References
1. Beal, Peter. (2008) "scroll" in A Dictionary
of English Manuscript Terminology
1450–2000 Online edition. Oxford
University Press, 2008.
http://www.oxfordreference.com
Retrieved 21 November 2013.
2. "Chapter 4. Literate Performances and
Literate Government" (https://dx.doi.org/
10.9783/9780812296761-006) , History
and the Written Word, Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 74–
90, 2020-12-31,
doi:10.9783/9780812296761-006 (http
s://doi.org/10.9783%2F9780812296761-
006) , ISBN 978-0-8122-9676-1,
S2CID 242324088 (https://api.semantics
cholar.org/CorpusID:242324088) ,
retrieved 2020-09-18
3. Murray, Stuart A. P. (2009). The Library:
An Illustrated History. Skyhorse
Publishing. p. 46. ISBN 9781602397064.
4. "Codex" (https://www.britannica.com/topi
c/codex-manuscript) . Encyclopaedia
Britannica. 2020.
5. Mizzi, Dennis (2019-01-24), "Were Scrolls
Susceptible to Impurity? The View from
Qumran" (https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/978
9004393387_003) , Law, Literature, and
Society in Legal Texts from Qumran,
BRILL, pp. 27–64,
doi:10.1163/9789004393387_003 (http
s://doi.org/10.1163%2F9789004393387_
003) , ISBN 978-90-04-39338-7,
S2CID 126962616 (https://api.semantics
cholar.org/CorpusID:126962616) ,
retrieved 2020-09-18
6. Hope, Christopher (21 March 2017).
"Anger as MPS bow to peers' pressure
and end 500-year old tradition of printing
new laws on vellum" (https://www.telegra
ph.co.uk/news/2017/03/21/anger-mps-b
ow-peers-pressure-end-500-year-old-tradit
ion-printing/) . The Telegraph.
7. Lyons, M. (2011) Books: A Living History.
Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. p.
35-36
8. Frost, Gary, "Adoption of the Codex Book:
Parable of a New Reading Mode" (http://c
ool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/
annual/v17/bp17-10.html) , The Book
and Paper Group Annual, Retrieved
12/1/2014
9. Roberts, Colin H., and Skeat, T.C. (1987),
The Birth of the Codex. London: Oxford
University Press for the British Academy,
p. 75.
10. Lyons, M. (2011) Books: A Living History.
Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. p.
37
External links
Look up history of scrolls in Wiktionary,
the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related
to Scrolls.
Encyclopaedia Romana: "Scroll and
codex" (http://penelope.uchicago.ed
u/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/sc
roll/scrollcodex.html)
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