PARCHMENT. Skins of certain animals, prepared after
particular methods, have supplied writing materials on which has
been inscribed the literature of centuries. Such a durable
substance, in most cases easily obtainable in fair abundance, would naturally suggest itself for the purpose, and we are therefore prepared for evidence of its use, and also for the survival of actual specimens, from very ancient times. The tradition of the employment of skins as writing material by the ancient Egyptians is to be traced back to the period of the Pharaohs of the IVth dynasty, and in the British Museum and elsewhere there exist skin-rolls which date back to some 1500 years But the country which not only manufactured but also exported in abundance the writing material made from the papyrus plant (see ) hardly needed to make use of any other material, and the instances of skin-rolls inscribed in Egypt must at all times have been rare. But in western Asia the practice of using skins as writing material must have been widespread even at a very early period. The Jews made use of them for their sacred books, and it may be presumed for other literature also; and the old tradition has been maintained by this conservative race down to our own day, requiring the synagogue rolls to be inscribed on this time-honoured material. No doubt their neighbours the Phoenicians, so ready to adapt the customs of other nations to their own advantage, would also have followed the same practice. The Persians inscribed their annals on skins; and skins were employed by the Ionian Greeks, as proved by the words of Herodotus (v. 58). There is no evidence forthcoming that the same usage was followed by the western Greeks and by the Italic tribes; but it is difficult to suppose that at a remote period, before the importation of papyrus, such an obviously convenient writing material as skin was not used among the early civilized races of Greece and Italy.
The method of preparation for skins for the service of literature
in those distant ages is unknown to us; but it may be assumed
that it was more or less imperfect, and that the material was
rather of the character of tanned leather than of the thinner and
better prepared substance which was to follow as a later time. The improvement of the manufacture to which we refer was to be of a nature so thorough as to endow the material with a new name destined to last down to the present day.
The new manufacture was traditionally attributed to Eumenes
II. of Pergamum, 197–158 The common story, as told
by Pliny on the authority of Varro, is that Eumenes, when seeking
to enlarge the library of his capital, was opposed by the
jealousy of the Ptolemies, who forbade the export of papyrus
from Egypt, thus hoping to check the growth of the rival library; and that the Pergamene king was thus compelled to revert to the old custom of using skins as writing material. It is needless to regard this story as literally true, or as other than a popular explanation of a great development of the manufacture of skin material for books in the reign of Eumenes. In former times the prepared skins had been known as the natural titles διφθέραι, μεμβράναι, the Latin membranae, and these were at first also attached to the new manufacture; but the latter soon received a special name after the place of its origin, and became known as περγαμηνή, charta pergamena, from which descends our English term parchment, through the French parchemin. The title of pergamena actually appears first in the edict De pretiis rerum of Diocletian ( 301), and in a passage in one of St Jerome’s Epistles.
The principle improvement in the new manufacture was the
dressing of the skins in such a way as to render them capable
of receiving writing on both sides, the older methods probably
treating only one side for the purpose, a practice which was
sufficient in times when the roll was the ordinary form of book
and when it was not customary to write on the back as well as
on the face of the material. The invention of parchment with
its two surfaces, recto and verso, equally available for the scribe, ensured the development of the codex. (See .)