The story of the book is a tale of commoners and kings, of ego and power, and of technology change and competition in the face of monopoly and avarice.
Pergamon was once among the largest cities in the world. Few have heard of it. Now it is called Bergama in western Turkey, south of Istanbul and 16 miles from the Aegean Sea. Pergamon became capital of the Attalid dynasty after 280 BC. It was one of two great cities in the ancient world that were formed after Alexander the Great died. The other was Alexandria in Egypt. The Attalids took their name from King Attalus who reigned until 200 BC. Attalus began an artistic Renaissance in Pergamon and his son, Eumenes, continued it.
Eumenes set out to build the greatest library in the world and outdo the great library in Alexandria. His soldiers were merciless in, of all things, stealing scrolls. The library grew to 200,000 volumes. Egypt quit supplying papyrus to Pergamon to retaliate against the theft of its books. But Pergamon had a rich wool industry and plenty of sheep. They had already been writing on sheepskin, or vellum, and called the stuff charta pergamene, which meant “paper of Pergamon”. The words charta pergamene evolved into our word parchment.
In order to get a durable product that is easy to write on, the hair and fat were removed and the skin was smoothed. The usual method involved soaking the hide in water, with calcium or flour (to cause fermentation) and salt added. The addition of tannin produced a chemical reaction that strengthened the product. In the process, some used dates, while others used dog poop.
Paper mills were built in Italy in 1276, France in 1348, Germany in 1390, and England in 1494. By the 16th century, paper was being manufactured throughout Europe. Paper became a strong competitor to papyrus, vellum and parchment.
It’s harder to roll parchment into a scroll than papyrus. Replacing papyrus led to inventing a whole new kind of storage system when someone thought of cutting parchment into rectangular sheets and sewing them together. Someone invented the book. Both Pergamon and Egypt fell under Roman control and, in 40 BC, Roman soldiers in Egypt burned part of Alexandria’s library by accident. Anthony, in his obsessive love for Cleopatra, gave the Pergamon Library to her. We remember Alexandria and we forget Pergamon.
Frank Romano is professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology
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