Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 43:172 (Oct 1886)
Article: Ancient Book-Making
Author: Henry Preserved Smith

BSac 43:172 (Oct 1886) p. 690

Ancient Book-Making

Rev. Henry Preserved Smith

The large place books have in modern society is evident to the most unthinking. We are so accustomed to dilate upon the advantages of the printing press, that we sometimes think of books as the peculiar possession of our own day, or at least of the modern age. But books were in existence long before printing was thought of. The newspaper, indeed, is a result of the printing press, and we may claim it as our own—our advantage over the ancients is evidently not so clear as we had imagined. And even in this respect, we may say that the private correspondence of the ancients took the place of the public press. The letters of Jerome or of Augustine give us a running chronicle of affairs in their time, briefer indeed than the newspaper accounts, but not less perspicu-

BSac 43:172 (Oct 1886) p. 691

ous, and -certainly more elegant. In any case, if we are to make literature a characteristic (might we not say the characteristic) of civilization, this mark will put us into one class, not only with the nations of modern Europe, but with the Greeks and the Romans and the Hebrews. At the same time it will run a broad line between us and our own ancestors in the forests of Germany. The history of the book as an instrument of civilization must possess for us a very distinct interest.

The art of writing alone does not produce books. That art may be widely used and yet books may be unknown. We may conceive the extended monumental and mural inscriptions of Egypt and Assyria, without the papyri of the one country or the clay tablets of the other. Whether suitable book material will not always be invented when writing becomes fully developed, is a question we need not stop to discuss. It is generally supposed that the Phenician alphabet, at least, was for a long time used by the lapidary before it came to the hands of the scribe —before ink and calamus were thought of, in fact. Even the extended epitaph of an Eshmunazer, however, or the long inscription which accompanies the bas-relief of an Assyrian king, could not be called a book. An essential thing about a book is that it is portable, so that it can become the private property of an individual, enabling him to study in his own home the thoughts of his fellow-men. Literature can retain its high place in the esteem of men only so far as it furthers this communion of spirits. The most rudimentary portable book seems to be the clay tablets to which allusion has already been made. The progress of Assyrian discovery has made every one acquainted with the existence of these. The writing was impressed while the clay was soft and the plate was then baked. Many thousand of these primitive books or leaves were stored in the great library at Nineveh, and it has b...