It's good to be a man of the information age! But in the past, things were a little more complicated...
For example, in Ancient Russia, there were no standard software text fonts and you had to write with your hands. Painstakingly deducing each letter.
For writing, from the 9th century, they used the Cyrillic alphabet that is usual for us, although even before that, for about a century, primitive hieroglyphic writing existed in Russia - “features and cuts”. To master the alphabet and work out handwriting, students of princely and family schools used tsers and wrote.
Cera are small wooden boards, the size of an ordinary school notebook, with a convex border, filled with wax flush with it. On ceres, as on a modern blackboard, small texts could be scratched out. Then erase them and write something again.
The writing was a small bone, wooden or metal rods 15-18 centimeters long and as thick as a modern pencil. The working end of the writing was pointed, and the opposite end was most often artistically decorated.
If you, as a resident of Ancient Russia, needed to write a letter, take a list of products with you to the market, leave a receipt for money, or compose a prayer book for yourself, you would look around in search of a birch. It was her bark, otherwise birch bark, that the Russians used as a cheap writing material for everyday needs.
They wrote on birch bark, as well as on tsers, with ordinary pointed writing, simply scratching out the desired text. Extremely rarely, ink could be used for especially important letters or drafts of official documents.
If you want to feel like a Russian scribe from the early 11th century, you should use a knitting needle and cut strips of birch bark. You can also melt a candle and pour wax on a small wooden board. You will get a semblance of a cera.
Since the 14th century, in remote and poor regions, cheap birch bark has been replacing expensive parchment in books. Many works of the northern Old Believer communities have come down to us in the form of birch bark books.
Birch-bark books were made quite simply: the book was written on birch-bark pages pre-selected in size; then blank sheets of cover were applied to them; then, on one side, holes were punched in the written pages with an awl, through which a leather cord was passed and thus the book was fastened.
Chronicles, official letters, laws and literary works were written exclusively in ink and on a much more expensive material - parchment.
This material was invented in the 2nd century BC in Asia Minor in the city of Pergamum and was a specially dressed calfskin.
Why were books so expensive in ancient times? Because writing just one book required a lot of valuable raw materials - calfskins (150-180 skins were required to make a Bible close in format to modern A4) and the production of parchment itself also required a lot of work!
The work of the scribe was even more appreciated. Literate people at the beginning of the Middle Ages were valuable, and literate people with beautiful handwriting were worth their weight in gold. One copyist could write no more than one page per day. In addition, each page was subject to painstaking artistic design: at first, a frame was made on it with some kind of ornament, into which the text was then entered; and after filling the page with text (the first letter of the page was also intricately drawn), a beautiful explanatory picture - a miniature - was necessarily added to it.
Each skin of the future parchment had to be washed and peeled off from it all the hard pile. Then it was soaked in lime mortar for a week. After such a soaking, the rest of the hairline fell out of the skin.
The still wet skin was stretched onto a wooden frame, where it was dried and minced with semicircular knives - that is, soft tissue was cleaned from the inside of the skin, after which chalk was rubbed into it and smoothed with pumice.
Then the parchment was bleached by rubbing flour and milk into it and cut into sheets of the required size.
Parchment was a very good writing material: it could be written on both sides; it was very light and strong and did not allow the ink to spread, thanks to the rubbed chalk; moreover, the parchment could be reused several times by scraping off the top layer with previously written text.
In Byzantium and Europe, there were technologies for dyeing parchment in purple, hazel, peach and other colors, as well as making gold and silver ink, which was used for especially valuable books. But in Russia they were not used.
Now it's ink! European inks were often quite expensive and difficult to manufacture. But in Russia, most often they managed with fairly cheap and affordable recipes.
The basis for most ink was gum (the resin of some types of acacia, or cherry). Depending on what substances were dissolved in the gum, the ink acquired one color or another.
Black ink was made from gum and carbon black ("smoked ink"). Also, black ink could be prepared by boiling in gum "ink nuts" - painful growths on oak leaves. By adding brown iron, rust or iron vitriol to the gum, brown ink was obtained. Blue ink was obtained by combining gum and copper sulfate, red - gum and cinnabar (mercury sulfide, a reddish mineral found in nature everywhere along with other metamorphic rocks).
There were also single-component inks that did not even require gum. They were made from some plants. From blueberries - purple ink, from buckthorn - purple, from the roots of knotweed or elderberries - blue, and from its own leaves - green.
Depending on the composition, the ink was either made in small quantities shortly before use, or stored in closed ceramic or wooden vessels. Before use, the ink was diluted with water. A small amount of ink was poured into a special vessel - an inkwell, which was shaped so as to be stable on the table, and it was convenient to dip a pen into it.
They wrote on parchment with sharpened quills, usually goose nibs, as they were the most durable and kept sharpening for a long time. Feathers from the left wing were mainly used, because they fit better in the right hand (respectively, left-handed people used feathers from the bird's right wing). Part of the beard was removed from the tip of the feathers to improve grip. Then the feathers were degreased, boiled in alkali and hardened in hot sand and sharpened (“repaired”) with a knife (hence the modern folding knife got the name “penknife”). To write capital letters 
use thin brushes.
Scribes with the most beautiful handwriting were allowed to write books. Capital letters were intricately written out in red cinnabar ink (hence the “red line”). Headings were written in ligature - a special decorative style of letters. Almost every page of the book was decorated with a colored drawing - a miniature. Even smaller drawings were often drawn on the margins - “wild flowers”. An ornament was placed along the edges of the sheet in the form of a frame. The most common of the ornaments in Russia was the "Old Byzantine", it is also "geometric".
The finished pages were sewn into small notebooks, which were then assembled into a plank binding, usually covered with leather or velvet, which could have an embossed or embroidered pattern or ornament.
Often, for the sake of greater safety, the corners of the binding were bound with metal, and especially valuable and sacred books usually had a solid metal frame and metal fasteners, with which the edges of the binding were rigidly fixed to each other so that the book did not lose its shape. The salary could be made of gold or silver and richly decorated with gems and bas-reliefs.
Since handwritten books in themselves, as well as the services of a copyist, were exceptionally expensive, only the most important, general cultural values were recorded in them. Dime novels, detective stories and low-brow fiction were absent as a class. There were also no humorous or utopian works among the books of that time.
First of all, religious and ideological works were recorded: the Gospels, the epistles of the apostles, the lives of the saints, the Psalms and other spiritual poetry, the rites of worship, the works of Hellenistic and Christian philosophers and theologians, etc.
In the second - various works and information of great cultural or scientific significance: stories and novels, teachings, folk epics, epics, songs, poems, proverbs and sayings. Myths, comedies and tragedies of antiquity, codes of laws and conciliar creeds, historical chronologies of events were often recorded. There were also scientific works on mathematics, medicine, chemistry, geography, astronomy, navigation, housekeeping, biology and other disciplines.
Information was selected very selectively. Often, for the sake of a new text, which was considered more important, some of the ancient works were scraped from parchment, since there were not enough new books. The language, reflecting the realities of the time, was much more capacious and accurate than it is now. Each word could carry a double or even a triple semantic load.
There is no object more familiar to us from childhood than a sheet of paper. On it, dear, our children's artistic masterpieces were born. And having matured a little, we learned to write, and also diligently covered sheet after sheet with letters. Further - more. I confess - in my youth I wrote poems to the subject of my first love, trusted my heart secrets to paper. Do we know what people used to write in ancient times? It seems romantic to me to write the words I LOVE YOU on a simple earthenware shard.
Here is such an interesting material I found on the history of writing. I will be glad if this topic is of interest to you.
Papyrus was made from reeds that grew in shallow waters in the lakes and rivers of Egypt and Syria. Large shipments of papyrus were sent through the Syrian port of Byblos. It is believed that the Greek word for books comes from the name of this port. The English word "paper" comes from the Greek word "papyrus".
The canes were cut lengthwise into narrow thin strips, which were placed in two layers under the press, placing them at right angles to each other. After drying, the yellowish surface was polished with a stone or other device. The historian Pliny names several varieties of papyrus - of different thicknesses and different types with sheets thin to transparency. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyri, and therefore they have not survived except in very dry regions, such as in the sands of Egypt or in the caves of Qumran.
Another material that was written on in the old days was parchment. Parchment was the processed skin of sheep, goats, antelopes and other animals. The word "parchment" came from the name of the city of Pergamon in Asia Minor, since the production of this writing material was at one time in a special way associated with this city. One of the varieties of parchment was material made from young calfskin.
Another material used in the old days for writing was called velum. As a rule, this type of skin was dyed purple. Many of the manuscripts that have survived to this day are indeed made on purple calfskin. Velum leather was usually written in gold or silver. Compared to papyrus, parchment lasted much longer. Copies made on parchment were much better, but also much more expensive, than papyrus manuscripts.
In addition, ostraca were used in the ancient world. This was the name given to untreated clay shards, which were used as writing material. Many clay shards have been found in Egypt and Palestine.
Another written material was stones or rocks. Archaeologists find ordinary stones on which letters were carved with a sharp metal object.
Inscriptions are also found on clay tablets, which, after writing, were dried in order to preserve what was written for a long time. The stone tablets of Moses were written in one of the varieties discussed above.
Wax tablets were also used. A piece of wood was covered with a thin layer of wax, which was then written on with a metal pen.
Friends, on what material from the above would you like to try to write a few lines, and perhaps even a letter, a story, or just a love confession to a loved one? Excluding paper of course.
Mankind did not know writing for most of its history. With the accumulation of experience and knowledge, a person has a need to remember and transfer them. It was easy to do this in direct communication, but much was lost due to the imperfection of human memory. The main obstacle was space and time, which only the sealed word could overcome.
Now on our planet Earth, in more than two hundred states, tens of thousands of different peoples and nationalities live, in which a great variety of languages, dialects and dialects have been formed over the past centuries and millennia. Each of these languages, dialects and dialects needed its own system of symbols and signs, which would allow recording the acquired knowledge for future generations, keeping records of the economy, etc.
Time passed, people changed, moved from place to place; some peoples mixed with other peoples. Along with these processes, languages also changed, and along with languages, writing also changed; from rock paintings of ancient people, symbols and hieroglyphs, to alphabets.
There are 33 letters in the modern Russian alphabet. But where did they come from; whether there were always so many of them in the alphabet; what was before the letters; how and with what our grandparents wrote; how difficult was it to do? We will try to answer these and other questions in the course of our research work.
We ourselves will try to make writing instruments from various materials. We will practice writing with charcoal and wooden sticks on clay tablets, birch bark and wax; we will use ink, goose and steel pens, and also reveal the secret of Chinese paper production by making it at home.
As a result of our fascinating journey through time, we will show how writing has changed, as well as analyze the past and try to look into the future. Let's try to predict what and on what our descendants will write, and maybe we will write in fifty years.
Interesting? Then let's plunge together into this still unknown and unrecognized by us mysterious world of writing. But that's just for now. We sit in a time machine and set off in search of adventure and knowledge of the unknown.
SUBJECT LETTER
The first step towards modern writing was the use of objects as reminders. They did not convey the thought, but only reminded of it. Then a specific meaning began to be assigned to objects:
Arrow - declaration of war;
A smoking pipe is a symbol of war or peace (to accept it meant to accept friendship and peace, to reject it meant to enter the warpath);
Cord, rope - the road.
Now we will try to tell a little about ourselves with the help of objects. Here is our message for you:
If you do not understand, we explain. This letter says: “MAMA, DAD AND WE (SISTERS) -
INSEPARABLE FAMILY. WE LOVE ANIMALS SO MUCH
AND WE HAVE A CAT - TSAR. »
Well, mom, dad, me, sister and cat - of course. BUT
a white scarf encircling us all means peace, friendship and our solidarity (we always do our best
together and support each other in everything).
A similar substantive letter is found even now - in our modern life. For example, a shoemaker hangs a boot on his signboard, and goods that the store sells are displayed on shop windows. And every person passing by, regardless of the language he speaks, understands what is sold in this store.
The ring on the ring finger of the right hand is a symbol of marriage.
Bouquets of flowers also talk to us:
The sunflower speaks of secret sympathy;
Red rose - confesses love;
Lilies - promises sincere friendship;
Tulip means success and glory, that is, someone wishes you good luck;
Yellow daffodils mean envy and deceit;
Violets - express hope and modesty;
Poppies - trying to make amends for a quarrel;
Chamomile - promises to be your support
Even an ordinary traffic light on the road is also a kind of subject writing. Depending on the burning color, everyone understands what needs to be done - go, wait or stand.
It can be assumed that this type of writing is very convenient, because people of the whole planet (both Russians, and Germans, and French) should understand it! But such a substantive letter has its drawbacks. For example, my mother sends me this message:
Of course, I understand this, that my mother invites me for a cup of tea. I run to the kitchen - there is no one there! It turns out that I was mistaken - my mom wanted to ask me in such a letter to make tea for her. These are the misunderstandings that occur when reading a subject letter, because it is possible to read them in different ways.
One such substantive message was told by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (V century BC). He wrote that the Scythians sent unusual gifts to the Persians, with whom they fought. They were a frog, a mouse, a bird and five arrows. (The animals and the bird were alive, real.) The Persians found themselves in difficulty. They had to understand the symbolic meaning of the gifts sent.
The Persian king Darius I saw (or wanted to see) in this message a sign of the obedience of his enemies. He decided that in this way the Scythians admit their defeat: the mouse and the frog, living in the earth and water, symbolize the earth and water elements, which the Scythians give him possession. The bird, according to the king, could be a symbol of the enemy’s quick flight, and the arrows could be a refusal to resist.
One of the king’s associates deciphered this living message in a completely different way: “If you, Persians, do not learn to jump through the swamps like frogs, hide in holes like mice, and fly like birds, then you will all die, showered with our arrows.” The court sage was right. The Scythians defeated the Persians in this war.
Subject "writing" is an accessible means of communication for peoples or tribes speaking different languages. To create it, the simplest type of conditional connection between an object and a concept is used (a frog - “jump”, a bird - “fly”). However, it is still impossible to read, or rather, correctly interpret such a message without special prompts and additional information.
It is necessary to have an idea of the culture and thinking of the authors of the message, to take into account the specific events associated with its compilation. It is no coincidence that the Persian king and the court sage "read" the message of the Scythians in the opposite way. Probably, the interpreter - the servant was well aware of the courage and militancy of the Scythians, with whom the Persians entered the war.
Another type of subject writing is the memorization of numbers with the help of notches on trees and wands, as well as with the help of knots on cords.
An interesting example of subject writing is the pile of the ancient Incas. Considered one of the world's great civilizations, the Inca Empire lasted from 1400 to 1532 AD. The ancient people lived in the Andes, along the western coast of South America.
Kipu is a thick rope or stick, on which cords with knots and plexuses are strung. The weight of a quipu reached four kilograms. For the Indians, each color had a certain meaning. Black meant misfortune, purple meant danger or enmity, red meant an army or war, white meant silver or an offer of peace, yellow meant gold, green meant grain. A simple knot transmitted the numeral 10, a double knot - 100, a triple knot - 1000.
Arranged in various combinations of colors and knots, the Indians transmitted a large number of messages. Some scholars believe that codes of laws, chronicles and even poems could be written on the pile.
LANGUAGE OF DRAWINGS (PICTOGRAPHY)
The first human drawings found by scientists were made 40-10 thousand years ago. Ancient man carved on stone, carved on bones, applied paint and charcoal to the walls of caves with the contours of animals.
Stone Age people, who lived about 15-20 thousand years ago, covered the walls of their caves with amazingly realistic images of bison, mammoths, fallow deer, wild boars, mountain goats, rhinos, horses, deer, people.
The artistic technique of that time was very diverse: drawing lines with fingers on clay, carving on various supports, painting itself, carried out by the most different ways- spraying liquid paint, applying it with a brush, a combination of paint and carving on the same image.
For the preparation of paints, various mineral dyes were used. Yellow, red and brown paints were usually prepared from ocher, black and dark brown from manganese oxide. White paint was produced from kaolin, various shades of yellow-red color - from limonite and hematite, charcoal gave black. The astringent in most cases was water, rarely fat.
Now we will visit the Stone Age and try to learn how to write in the language of drawings, as ancient people wrote. To do this, we needed coal and wallpaper (we won’t dirty the walls of the house).
We imagine that we are hunters who have returned home after a long search for prey. And we splash out everything we see on the wall of our cave. In the drawings, we will tell you where we have been, how we tracked down prey and what animals we met.
We went hunting early in the morning. First we saw large, furry mammoths threatening us with their fangs. Then, from the other side, various other animals crept up to us. We were surrounded on all sides!
But we hit a couple of animals with branched horns (deer). When we returned home, the stars illuminated the path for us.
This is how the story turned out. Our mammoths are the best - big, furry and realistic. Such an atmosphere was created - we felt like real ancient people. Applying pictography was not difficult, but on the contrary, it was even easy and fun to draw. But if you take into account the fact that ancient people first carved a drawing on a stone, and then painted it over, then this is a very huge job!
Still, the modern way of writing is more convenient, because people understand drawings in different ways.
I wonder if pictography exists now - in our modern times? We arm ourselves with a camera and go hunting again, but this time not for animals, but for “modern” pictographs.
At school, on the electrical panel - “Caution! High voltage".
At home, on clothes - “hand wash”, “do not bleach”, “iron at medium temperature”,
"dry cleaning is prohibited", "you can not squeeze and dry in the washing machine."
On a soft toy - "recyclable"
On the mosquito repellent - "The sign - a basket or a person throwing the package into the basket, reminds you of the need to throw the package into special containers, from where the garbage goes to the waste processing plant."
On the medicine - "Method of application."
Road sign - "Indicator for the movement of cars."
Road sign - "Pedestrian crossing".
Road sign - "Caution children."
Pharmacy sign.
Barbershop sign.
As a result of our research, we found that people still use pictographs today! The most common pictograms are road signs, the image of goods on the signs of shops and workshops.
HIEROGLYPHS
At first, people drew what they wanted to convey or remember. But gradually the drawings turned into icons, each designating a word. Such icons are called hieroglyphs.
The word "hieroglyph" originally meant "sacred writings". Now we call this word the writing system, which was used in ancient times in Egypt, and in our time - in China and Japan.
Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting people and gods, animals and plants, celestial bodies and household utensils and much, much more are very interesting and mysterious.
Egypt. Temple of Karnak.
There were approximately seven hundred hieroglyphs in Egypt. Their very specific appearance (birds, snakes, men, various objects) for a long time supported the idea in European scientists that these signs are symbolic. The truth was discovered in 1822 by Francois Champollion.
Legend says that at the age of 11, when he first saw ancient Egyptian inscriptions in a collection of antiquities brought from the banks of the Nile, Francois said: “I will read this when I grow up!”
The whole further life of Champollion was aimed at achieving this goal. He mastered many ancient languages, studied the MANUFACTURING OF PAPYRUS
ancient history. In 1807, a seventeen-year-old youth made a report on Ancient Egypt at the Grenoble Academy. It took another long fifteen years to prepare for the main event. Dense thickets of reeds covered the banks of the event in the life of a scientist. And here is the victory! Method of reading the ancient Egyptian writing of the Nile.
The reed was cut down, and its stalk was cut into thin plates of the same size.
Only six years after his brilliant discovery, Champollion first arrived in the Nile Valley. Crowds of locals converged to look at a foreigner who could read the inscriptions on the walls of the ancient pyramids, a foreigner who "gave" Egypt Water-soaked plates tightly packed his story. in a row; rows were stacked on top of each other.
Hieroglyphic writing, finally developed by 3200 BC. BC e. , without any changes lasted until the III century. n. e. Consisting of very beautiful signs, it was easy to engrave on a variety of surfaces: on the walls of temples, tombs, the resulting layer of plates on steles, statues and other objects. This letter was used mainly for hitting with a wooden mallet and thinning out.
religious and official texts. However, hieroglyphs were ill-suited for everyday use, and therefore scribes began to use significantly simplified signs - the so-called "hieratic" writing, which was widely used in everyday life. They were compiledFinally, the surface was smoothed. And after letters, bills, administrative acts. Scribes used black or red ink to dry, resulting in a sheet of light brown not only papyrus, but also fragments of stones, clay shards (ostracons). colors.
The Egyptians loved to carve inscriptions on the walls of pyramids, sculptures, sarcophagi. But for domestic purposes, they found a good material for writing - papyrus. It was made from Nile reed. The sheets were glued to the edge and turned into
The most convenient form of a book made of papyrus, a brittle, fragile material, was a scroll. scrolls that could be written on like
They wrote on papyrus with a stick or brush. along as well as across.
There are still papyrus factories in Egypt today. We visited one of them this summer.
Papyrus in such factories is now made exclusively for tourists.
We were told and shown there how papyrus is made. The most striking thing is that the reed soaked in water is very, very light.
Gradually, a syllabic alphabet emerged from the hieroglyphs: in it, each sign is a whole syllable (Ancient Egypt thousands of years ago).
The Phoenicians went even further (inhabitants of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, excellent sailors and successful merchants) - they came up with letters and became the "inventors of the alphabet." Their alphabet consisted of 22 simplified characters. Each letter is one sound. But they wrote down only consonants. The Phoenicians wrote from right to left, now they write like that in Arab countries.
The ancient Greeks got acquainted with the writing of the Phoenicians, but added new letters to it - to denote vowel sounds. This is how the world's first real alphabet appeared (Ancient Greece, I millennium BC). The Greek alphabet already had 24 letters denoting both consonants and vowels.
The creators of the Slavic alphabet are the brothers Cyril and Methodius. 863 is considered the year of birth of the Slavic alphabet. The basis for the creation of the Slavic alphabet was the Greek alphabet.
The brothers Constantine and Methodius were born in Thessalonica (in Greek, Thessaloniki) in the family of a military commander, received a good education. Cyril studied in Constantinople at the court of the Byzantine emperor Michael III, knew Greek, Slavic, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic languages well, taught philosophy, for which he received the nickname Philosopher. Methodius was in military service, then for several years he ruled one of the regions inhabited by the Slavs; subsequently retired to a monastery.
In 860, the brothers had already made a trip to the Khazars for missionary and diplomatic purposes. In order to be able to preach Christianity in the Slavonic language, it was necessary to make a translation of the Holy Scripture into the Slavic language; however, the alphabet capable of conveying Slavic speech did not exist at that moment.
Constantine set about creating the Slavic alphabet. Methodius, who also knew the Slavic language well, helped him in his work, since a lot of Slavs lived in Thessalonica (the city was considered half-Greek, half-Slavic). In 863, the Slavic alphabet was created (the Slavic alphabet existed in two versions: the Glagolitic alphabet - from the verb - “speech” and the Cyrillic alphabet; scientists still do not have a consensus which of these two options was created by Cyril). With the help of Methodius, the books were translated from Greek into Slavonic. The Slavs got the opportunity to read and write in their own language. The Slavs not only had their own, Slavic, alphabet, but also the first Slavic literary language was born, many of whose words still live in Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages.
Slavic alphabet
The Slavic alphabet contains a secret message. In order to understand the secret writing of the Slavic alphabet, it is necessary not only to skim through it, but to read each letter-word. After all, each letter-word contains a semantic core that Konstantin put into it. Here is what he wanted to tell us:
I know the letters
The letter is a treasure.
Work hard earthlings
As befits reasonable people -
Comprehend the universe!
Carry the word with conviction -
Knowledge is a gift from God!
Dare, delve into
To comprehend the light of existence! .
More than 500 years ago, it took months or even years to write or rewrite a thick book, and even decorate it with drawings. Not surprisingly, handwritten books were very expensive. In addition, some of them were dressed in expensive leather, brocade, and sometimes silver. Often the owners of such books chained them to the shelves so that they would not be stolen.
Ivan Fedorov printed the first Russian alphabet in 1574 in Lvov. In his books, he and other printers used letters that looked like old handwritten ones.
Peter I carried out the first reform of Russian writing. He removed a number of unnecessary letters from the alphabet, and also introduced a new style (Petersburg, early 18th century). We still use this new font, the civil alphabet.
For three centuries, the Russian alphabet has undergone a number of reforms. The number of letters generally decreased, with the exception of the letters "e" and "y" (used earlier, but legalized in the 18th century) and the only "author's" letter - "e", proposed by Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. The last major reform of Russian writing was carried out in 1917-1918 (see Russian Spelling Reform of 1918), which resulted in the modern Russian alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.
The possibility of further reduction of letters in our alphabet is not excluded. For example, the letters "E", "Yo", "Yu", "I" can be written "ye", "yo", "yu", "ya". And the softness or hardness of the letters is indicated by some dash. Thus, only 27 letters - sounds - will remain in the alphabet.
WHAT PEOPLE WRITTEN ON
Now it is clear to us how alphabetic writing developed. Now let's go back to the time when people invented hieroglyphs and icons. The idea of books did not arise then. People wrote on smooth-cut boards, on clay tiles, on palm leaves, on the skin of animals. They wrote on the material that is easier to find or make.
The most ancient writing material is parchment, fresh mutton skin. Slaves had to suffer a lot to make a good parchment strip: they washed it, scraped off all the fat from the skin, dipped it in slaked lime, dried it on a wooden frame and polished it. The result was thin, slightly yellowish skin, equally smooth and clean on both sides. Only after such processing it was possible to write on parchment.
Sometimes parchment was dyed blue, purple or black. Such parchment was written with gold dust ground with water and glue. The thinner the parchment was, the more expensive it was.
Parchment was expensive, and gradually it was no longer used.
The first clay writing tablets appeared in Mesopotamia. The scribe took a damp board with a smooth surface and squeezed out the text on it with a stick. Then the plank was dried in the sun or fired in a kiln. After that, it was coated with a layer of clay and the name of the addressee was written on it. Then came the re-firing. From the release of steam, the inner plate peeled off from the “envelope” and turned out to be enclosed in it, like a nut kernel in a shell.
Now we will go back in time and try to pee on clay tablets. To do this, we bought clay in the store, and prepared brushes (we will write with a pointed end).
It's easier to write with toothpicks! Also, bug fixes are very good. I didn’t like what I wrote - I wet my finger and erased it.
When our clay tablets were written, we left them to dry. And the next day they baked like pies in the oven. Here is the beauty we have.
Clay tablets were fragile, heavy, and people began to look for other material for writing.
In ancient Egypt, they wrote on papyrus. We have already written about its production method above. Reed served as raw material for it. Thin, flexible and transparent strips about fifty centimeters long were separated from the lower part of the reed, which was in the water. They were laid in rows so that the strips were connected by edges. When a square was obtained, another layer of stripes was applied to it, but already perpendicular to the first. The whole sheet was dried and polished with a shell or a piece of ivory. It was then soaked in vegetable glue and beaten with a mallet to make it thin. After that, the leaf was dried in the sun. On the carefully polished and smooth surface of the papyrus, the scribe drew hieroglyphs. He used water colors as inks.
Learning to write and read hieroglyphs was a very difficult task. In addition to labor and time, this required considerable abilities. Therefore, the scribe in Egypt enjoyed great respect and honor. Scribes often held high positions, among them were ministers, philosophers, architects, scientists
For all its good qualities, papyrus was still fragile, it was not easy to make it. And despite this, it was used for a very long time, longer than many other materials suitable for writing.
The Romans and Greeks also wrote on lead sheets, and later on wax tablets. The wax tablet had some advantages over clay tablets, papyrus, and lead sheets. The board was made of boxwood, beech or ivory and slightly hollowed out like a saucer. Melted wax, dyed dark, was poured into the recess. The wax quickly solidified, and then the scribe applied signs to it. After reading such a letter, one could erase it and write the answer on the same wax.
I wonder if it was difficult to write on wax? There is only one way to check - your own experience. To do this, we take a wooden board and fill it with melted wax (candle). Pour the wax so that an even layer is obtained on top of the plank. After the wax hardens, we will try to pee
The finished wax tablet turned out to be very similar to a chocolate bar.
Writing on a wax board is not very comfortable. When you scratch the wax from above, wax chips appear and must be constantly removed. You have to press hard with a toothpick and scratch the same element of the letter more than once.
The wax tablet also suffered from a very significant drawback: it could not guarantee the long-term preservation of the text. However, she lived for quite a long time. Even in the 12th century, there was still a factory in Paris that made such boards.
In ancient Russia, such cheap and accessible material as birch bark was widely used for private correspondence and personal records.
And we will also try to pee on birch bark. First, the birch bark must be prepared for writing. Carefully remove the upper rough layer of birch bark so that you get a smooth surface on which you can write. We will write by squeezing letters on the surface with pointed sticks. Previously, these sticks were made of bone, and we will make them wooden.
So hard! After a couple of words, the hand gets very tired. You need to press very hard with a stick on the birch bark. But the text on the surface is clearly visible.
The appearance of paper was a very important historical milestone in the cultural development of mankind. She immediately expanded the use of writing, which until that time remained the property of only the kings, their confidants and a small circle of scientists.
Paper was invented in China. The merit of this great invention is attributed to the Chinese Chai Lun, who lived about two thousand years ago. But some historical information suggests that paper was known in China before it.
Chai Lun made paper from silk. Obviously, he considered it the most suitable for this purpose, since silk used to be the main material for writing. This explains why most of the ancient Chinese literary monuments are written on silk scrolls.
Then linen and hemp rags and tree bark were used to make paper.
Now we will travel back in time and go to China to see everything with our own eyes. We take an old sheet and cut it into small pieces (in China, the linen was torn, but we will try to speed up the process of making paper). We tried so hard that in the end, everyone got blisters on their fingers from scissors. It turned out a whole mountain of rags. I can’t even believe that paper can come out of this. But we don't stop. We throw everything into a pot, fill it with water and boil. The fibers have to separate for it to work. Only after 12 hours of cooking did our sheet turn into mush. After all our mess has cooled, we proceed to the formation of sheets of paper. We squeeze the slurry and put it on a tile, cover it with a second tile on top, on which we install daddy's dumbbells (it turned out like a press). After about an hour, we remove the press and the top tile so that our “Chinese” paper dries out. And in the morning, when the paper sheets were dry, we removed the second tile of the tile. Everything went well! But what happened is difficult to call, in our time, paper. It's most likely cardboard. The result was thick, dense sheets resembling cardboard to the touch (or maybe daddy's dumbbells are not heavy enough?) With a rough surface. Still, this is a victory, before they could not even think that it was possible to make paper from a sheet. We are just magicians!
Now is the time to start learning Chinese. Let's write some hieroglyphs on our "Chinese" paper.
We looked at a lot of different Chinese characters and finally chose "Red Forest" and "flower". And as soon as you can remember - what hieroglyph means this or that word? Very carefully with the help of brushes we write the selected words with red paint. The surface of the paper is uneven, so we need a lot of attention, accuracy, patience and precision. If at least one stick is depicted higher or lower, to the right or to the left, then a completely different word will turn out.
Here we have completed our experiment. Writing hieroglyphs on "Chinese" paper is also very interesting and exciting. Now we know how to write two Chinese characters: "red forest" (top) and "flower" (bottom).
And interestingly - if you wash this paper, then you can probably write on it again? But we will leave this experiment for later. We return to the history and theory of the Chinese secret of paper production.
The Chinese jealously guarded the secret of paper production. Guilty of divulging the secret was threatened with the death penalty. But there are no eternal secrets in the world. The time has come, and the secret of making paper has penetrated into Muslim countries. It was in 751, when the Arabs defeated the Chinese army and the captured Chinese told the winners about this secret.
From the Arabs, the secret spread among the European peoples. The first paper production in Europe arose in the 11th century in Spain, in the city of Valencia. Spanish paper in the XIII century penetrated into France and Italy. Initially, it was used only for notarial deeds. And not because they treated her with distrust, but because of her high cost.
Gradually paper production improved. The merit of the Italians is especially great in this. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the paper workshops in Fabriano were the best in Europe. Paper became cheap, readily available, and produced in large quantities. It has become in all countries the ideal material for writing.
WHAT PEOPLE WRITTEN
Slowly but steadily, along with the improvement of the material for writing, the tool with which signs were applied became more convenient. At first, these were hard granite chisels, they were used to carve icons on stones, on the walls of caves. Then pointed wooden sticks appeared - they wrote on parchment, papyrus, clay and wax tablets.
In some countries - in Italy, England, France, Spain - they wrote with silver and lead sticks. But when paper began to spread, there was a need for another material that could leave a mark on the sheet. In Italy, sticks made of black shale began to be used. This slate was called "karatash" - "black stone". Hence the name of our pencil.
Graphite deposits were discovered in England in 1565. Lumps of this soft stone were sawn into thin plates, slates were made. The graphite deposit was then considered the only one in the world, and the king's government was afraid that it would not be depleted. Graphite was used very sparingly. It was allowed to mine only six weeks a year. And yet, after two centuries, the deposits were almost exhausted. I had to return to silver and lead sticks again.
Pure graphite pencils were large and brittle. In 1795, the Frenchman Conte applied a very successful rationalization: he mixed graphite dust with a special sticky clay. The pencil turned out to be durable, and the trace from it on paper did not lose its clarity. They began to make a thin rod from such a mixture and “dress” it in a wooden shirt. The graphite savings turned out to be huge, and the pencil itself became stronger and more comfortable. This is how it has come down to our days.
And graphite deposits were discovered first in one country, then in another. In Russia, its huge deposits were found in Siberia, in the Sayan Mountains. According to its qualities, our Russian graphite is one of the best in the world.
Since the 17th and especially the 18th centuries, when epistolary literature began to flourish along with the widespread use of paper, it has become fashionable to write in ink. The ink itself was known as early as the time of Emperor Augustus. Then there was even red ink, which was considered sacred in Rome.
The appearance of ink is associated with the appearance of parchment - it required a composition that would eat into the skin. Scientists have established the most common recipes for making ink. From the growths on diseased oak and elm leaves, an infusion was made and mixed with iron sulfate. These growths - the so-called "ink nuts" - contained the tannin tannin. Later, tannin was also found in other plants - in cane, in common viburnum, in the Mexican log tree.
In Russia, too, there were many ways to prepare ink. In the 15th century, scribes even made them “from good kvass and sour cabbage soup, infused on rusty iron.” Birch soot was in great use. And in the villages, elderberry, crushed in a mortar, was used for ink
When ink began to be used for writing, some new tool was required instead of any sticks. In eastern countries they began to write with "kalam" - a hollow reed. The tip of her split, and ink gradually flowed down it. This reed in its structure already resembled our pen. For several hundred years, kalam left Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek and Latin letters, Arabic script on parchment, papyrus and paper.
The kalam was replaced by a bird feather sharpened in a certain way. Feathers used goose or crow. They wrote on paper with goose quills, which had to be cut obliquely, sharpened and split with a penknife.
The goose feather has been used for many centuries. Copernicus and Garibaldi, Shakespeare and Lomonosov, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Pushkin wrote to them.
It is very difficult to write with a pen. We sometimes got small blots. Much easier to write with a ballpoint pen. When you write with a quill pen, you need to hold your breath so that you don’t get blots. It is not necessary to press on the paper, otherwise very thick lines are obtained. The pen must even be held at a certain angle, otherwise the ink will not be written on the paper, but everything will be smeared. After we tried to write with a pen and plunged into the atmosphere of the past, it immediately became clear to us how difficult it was to write then.
The first steel nib appeared around 1820 in Germany. From there it came to France, Russia and other countries. It was expensive, and this cost was even more increased by the fact that a stick with a steel, gold or yakhon feather was often decorated with diamonds, rubies, diamonds and other jewelry. This luxury was available only to aristocrats, the rich, and therefore a cheap goose quill competed with a metal pen for a long time.
Let's try to write with a pen with a metal nib. I (Angelina) will write phrases that read from left to right and vice versa in the same way (there are so many of them!). And I (Nastya) will write a poem of my own composition.
It is a little easier to write with a fountain pen than with a quill pen. A nib could break when you press it, but a fountain pen doesn't break because it has an iron tip. But sometimes blots still turned out. We had very good impressions, sometimes it felt as if we really live in those times when we wrote with a pen, which was much more difficult than in modern times.
Only after we tried pen and ink ourselves did it become clear how difficult it was to write a whole book! For example, you have already written half of the book and made a blot, you have to rewrite everything - everything that you wrote, from beginning to end. And if again you accidentally get a blot, or you write the wrong letter, or you make a mistake, rewrite everything again. It is very difficult to write a whole book without a single mistake or inkblot. We understood how complicated everything was then and how much respect, admiration, patience, perseverance, and knowledge the scribes possessed. We have these memorable moments in our memory and it was as if we had a ride in a time machine.
At the end of the last century, metal feathers began to be made by stamping factory machines. At that time, they won the final victory over goose feathers.
All steel nibs had to be dipped in ink, and many improvements were made to their design so that one could write longer with a single dipping of the pen. Some nibs were made with spoon-shaped indentations and grooves in which some ink remained when the nib was dipped into the inkwell. When the ink on the nib ran out, a little more flowed from the recess along the grooves to the tip. Another way was to make the nib with the "wings" facing down so that the ink would remain underneath. Some feathers were made as if double; the idea was that a certain amount of ink should remain between the nibs and nibs.
All these attempts once again emphasized the long overdue need for a pen that would have its own supply of ink. This need was met in 1883 when Lewis Edson Waterman, a New Yorker, made the first usable fountain pen.
In the 1940s, the brothers Laszlo and Georg Biro invented the ballpoint pen as we know it today. In 1943, the first commercial samples were made. During World War II, the British government purchased Laszlo's patent. Ballpoint pens began to be used by navigators in aviation and officers in difficult combat conditions.
Felt nibs for writing instruments were invented in Japan in the 1960s. Pens with felt tips are called "felt-tip pen" ("flowmaster" from the English flow - to drain). Felt tips are most widely used in fluorescent markers known to all.
Rollers appeared in the 80s and 90s. In fact, this is a more "thin" and advanced technology of ballpoint pens. Fine bead and less thick ink. In the early 1990s, rollerball technology was greatly improved. An unprecedented variety of tools and firms appeared.
CONCLUSION
So our unique and fascinating journey into the mysterious world of writing has come to an end.
As a result of our research work, we found that in our modern world, methods of transmitting information that were used before the invention of the alphabet are widely used. So subject writing and the language of drawings are currently very popular in the design of shop windows and signboards.
In addition, our "time travel" showed that you can write with anything and on anything. The only question is - on what and with what is it more convenient to write?
We enjoyed writing most of all on plain paper with a steel pen and a ballpoint pen, although it is easier to write with a ballpoint pen.
Mankind has come a long way in order to create such a material for writing as paper. The walls of the caves of primitive people, clay tablets, wax tablets, birch bark - nothing can compete with paper, which is light and elastic, it is not fragile, so it can be easily folded. Thanks to these properties, paper can be used to make various crafts - for example, origami.
Over time, with the advent of new technologies and writing instruments, writing and transmitting information will become even easier. Pens have already been invented with which you can write without squeezing them with your fingers. This is achieved with a special shape of the handle, which was invented by the Japanese. And who is not familiar with the global computer network Internet?
Letters and short messages are now written and sent by e-mail using a computer. With the help of special computer programs, they draw whole pictures, design houses and garden plots, and much, much more.
Maybe a little more time will pass and a person will be able to send thoughts to another person, like files or graphic images? After all, it has been scientifically proven that a person uses only 10 percent of the total brain resources. Who knows, maybe we will have to master new technologies for writing, transmitting and storing information?! Wait and see!!!
