Writing on Writing Materials (Part-2)

 

Some unfinished business with the Greeks and Romans

In the first part, I wrote about the writing materials used by the ancient Greeks. But what I did not mention was their very first writing material, simply because, I did not know about it at that time. It was only after publishing the blog I acquired the information, and therefore decided to share it with you in this article.

As it seems, the Mycenaean-Greeks, who were the earliest Greek-speaking people, started writing on the same material which the Mesopotamians used to write on. Yes, correct – clay tablets! It is also worth mentioning that their script was very distinctive from the present Greek script we all recognise. The researchers named this script ‘Linear B’ (which, in my opinion, is a very insipid name). The earliest examples of such clay tablets come from 1450 BCE. Unfortunately, just about three and a half centuries later (around 1100 BCE), came the Greek dark age, when the skill of writing was almost forgotten. But then again, I think, Greece was destined to be one the greatest civilisations of the west. Soon, (i.e., again 350 years later) the dark age ended (750 BCE) and the archaic age began which was followed by the classical age. The Greeks kind of rediscovered writing with the development of the familiar Greek alphabets. This time, they used a variety of materials which I have, as you know, wrote about in the first part.

Later the Romans adapted the Greek alphabets and along with that they adapted Greek writing tools as well. Nonetheless, I find the Roman versions a little fancier. Apart from these, they also used styli made of lead which, off course I do not need to say, was poisonous. I would like to call this rather harmful styli, the ancestor of our good friendly and generally harmless pencils. The stylus created marks just how a pencil does on abrasion as the core material adhere to the surface, the obvious difference being that it was lead instead of graphite.

 

‘Maya’ of Mesoamerica

The Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica and its colonisation in the 16^th century, is witness to many massacres. The conquistadors banned the practices which represented the indigenous culture and tried to destroy those things that captured the history of the civilisation that existed well before they came to ‘civilise’ the so-called savage people of the ‘new world’. Moreover, many pieces degraded because of environment; numerous, stolen by people with degraded souls.

It is perhaps the what the luck would have it that, despite all this destruction and loot, enough artifacts survived from which we know, to some extent, about the writing system and what is most important for this blog – the materials used for writing in Mesoamerica.

Mesoamerica is one of those places where writing developed independently, although much later compared to other such sites. Researchers suggest that the oldest actual writing system in the whole pre-Columbian Americas comes from the Maya civilisation from around 200 to 300 BCE. One thing that I am quite sure is that the Mayan glyphs or ‘hieroglyphs’, as the first explorers to encounter this script would have called it, is the most gorgeous script I have seen till date. Yet, the scribes must have had a hard time memorising this mesmerising writing system, as there are 800 characters in the Mayan writing system. Now, coming to the writing implements, most of it is presumption as we don’t have any surviving implements. However, we do have records of the European chroniclers who have written about these materials and we definitely know much more about the writing media.

Just like in ancient Egypt or Greece or the Roman Empire, writing was done on monumental stones in Mayan civilisation. According to the sources no carving tool (which is also the writing tool in this case) made of metal has been found yet and they most likely used ‘stone chisels’ instead. Other than that, the maya glyphs were molded in stucco (a plaster-like material consisting lime, sand and water) and also incised and painted on surfaces such as bones, shells, wood and even jade. The incising tool was sharp knife made of obsidian; a mineral widely used in the ancient Americas. The most remarkable writing media was the Mayan bark-paper which is also called ‘amate’. It was commonly made with the inner bark of fig or mulberry tree. The bark was to be removed from the tree preferably in the spring when the bark is young. it was soaked in water for a day with lime and ash for bleaching. Then again soaked in clean water for another day. next, the softened bark fibres were then separated into thin threads and dried. These threads were then arranged on a board in a crisscross pattern and pounded into a sheet with a specialised grooved stone tool. The paper thus produced had a rough texture. It was considered sacred and used for religious purposes. The Mayans used amate to makes books known as codices. Unfortunately, the researchers were able to recover only four of them and none of them are old enough to be termed as ‘ancient’. It is hard to tell the time period when this paper was developed but many propose that it was contemporary to the invention of Chinese Xuan paper.

According the speculations of several scholars, the Mayans used sophisticated brushes made using animal hairs with reed or wooden handle. These brushes were capable of producing very thin lines and must have looked similar to the traditional Chinese brushes. They also used pens made with feathers. Such pens are called quills. They must have used the wing-feathers of wild turkey which are ideal for this purpose due to their stiffness.

When there is brush and pen there is ink. Mayans predominantly used three ink colours – blue, black and red. The blue, called ‘Mayan blue’ for obvious reasons, was an incredibly chemically stable and vibrant colour which was mainly made with indigo and palygorskite (a certain type of clay). Black colour was produced using soot and red was made with hematite. Other colours were used very infrequently and were made out of materials such parts of plants, sea shells, bugs and different clays and minerals. Conch-shells cut in half-length was used as inkpots. 

In sixteenth century, the Spanish banned the production of amate and slowly the western paper and other writing materials replaced those of the autochthonous.

 

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