Generally, the writing was done on the horizontal strips.
Sheets made in this way were joined into scrolls about 5 or 6
yards in length, though longer scrolls were not uncommon.
Sometimes single sheets were used for business documents,
letters, and writing instruction. Papyrus was typically pur-
chased from Egypt and sold by vendors.
Papyrus, though, was stiff ; it could not be folded, and
writing on it with pen and ink could be diffi cult because the
writer had to fi ght the grain of the material. Th us parchment
was oft en used because it was easy to write on and its light
color formed a readable contrast with dark ink. Th e disad-
vantage of parchment was that it was even more diffi cult to
make than papyrus, so it was more expensive. Parchment
was made from the hides of domesticated animals, preferably
very young or even unborn animals. Th e hide was washed to
remove hair, soaked in lime, and then stretched on a frame.
Th e stretched hide was scraped, wetted, coated with chalk,
rubbed with pumice, and then allowed to dry. Another disad-vantage of parchment was that the ink was easily erased. His-
torians believe that many important Greek documents have
been lost simply because the parchment on which they were
written was recycled.
Ink was oft en made of soot, charcoal, or resin. Examina-
tions of many ancient Greek manuscripts reveal that their
inks contained a high concentration of iron. Of course,
Greek writing techniques were not limited to using a stylus
on wax tablets and pen and ink on papyrus or parchment.
Carving inscriptions in stone on buildings and tombs was
also common.
Additionally, in roughly 440 b.c.e. the Greeks invented
a form of writing called steganography, which means “cov-
ered or hidden writing.” Steganography diff ers from modern
cryptography in that the latter encodes messages that can still
be seen but cannot be deciphered unless the reader has a key
to the code. Steganography, in contrast, is the writing of mes-
sages that literally cannot be seen. Th e ancient Greeks used
it for military communications, when the sender was con-
cerned that the message could fall into the enemy’s hands.
Th e simplest form of steganography was scratching a written
message on a board and then covering it with wax. Th e board
looked like nothing other than an unused wax tablet. Some
military commanders were more inventive. Th e Greek his-
torian Herodotus records the story of a military commander
who shaved the head of one of his slaves and tattooed his mes-
sage on the slave’s head. Th e message was hidden as the slave’s
hair grew out and then retrieved when the recipient reshaved
the slave’s head.ROME
BY MICHAEL J. O’NEAL
Th e Roman alphabet has had an enormous infl uence on
writing systems worldwide. In the modern world, languages
from Afrikaans to Zulu, with scores of others in between, are
written using the Roman alphabet. For ancient Romans the
alphabet made the task of writing simpler compared with
earlier pictographic writing systems used by other cultures.
Because of this relative ease of writing, combined with fairly
high literacy rates among upper-class Roman citizens, large
numbers of written texts survive from Rome, though the
ones that survive are only a fraction of the number produced.
Th ese texts survive not only as written documents but also
in such forms as inscriptions on buildings, monuments, and
even coins.
No examples of writing on the Italian Peninsula ex-
isted before the Greeks established colonies there in about
the eighth century b.c.e. Th e native Etruscans then adopted
and modifi ed the Greek alphabet during the seventh century
b.c.e. Th e Roman alphabet in turn developed out of the Etrus-
can alphabet. (Note that the word alphabet is composed of
the fi rst two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.) In
time the Roman alphabet spread through the earliest Roman
settlements and from there throughout the Roman Empire.Bilingual milestone marker (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection,
American School of Classical Studies at Athens)1190 writing: Rome0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1190 1190 10/10/07 2:31:24 PM