ePub The Book Before Printing: Ancient; Medieval and Oriental (Lettering; Calligraphy; Typography) by David Diringer in Arts-Photography

Description

A remarkable work. . . . For sheer weight of information there is no equal to it. mdash; The Spectator. It is probable that the earliest "books" were written on wood or leaves as early as the fourth millennium B.C. These fragile materials; unfortunately; have not come down to us. In their absence; the earliest surviving books are the clay tablets of Mesopotamia; the oldest attributed to c. 3500 B.C. On these ancient clay shards; dense rows of cuneiform script record the seminal writings of mankind: the Gilgamesh epic; Sumerian literary catalogues; Babylonian astrology; Assyrian accounts of the Creation and the Flood; and the Lipit-Ishtar Law-Code (c. 2000 B.C.); predating Hammurabi and the oldest law code in human history.Probably as ancient as the Mesopotamian writings; or nearly so; are Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a sense; it is the papyrus scrolls of the Egyptians mdash; preserved by that countrys hot; dry climate mdash; that represent the true ancestors of the modern book. As the centuries passed; papyrus slowly gave way to parchment (the prepared skins of animals) as writing material. Indeed; the handwritten parchment or vellum codex is "the book" par excellence of the Middle Ages. Western European book production is only part of the story; and the author is at pains to illuminate the bibliographic contributions of numerous peoples and cultures: Greek and Roman book production; books made in central and southern Asia; the books of Africa; pre-Columbian America; and the Far East mdash; material that is often not mentioned in Western histories of the book.Based on years of painstaking research and incorporating a wealth of new material and conclusions; the text is enhanced throughout by abundant illustrations mdash; nearly 200 photographic facsimiles of priceless manuscripts in museums and libraries around the world.