Ancient man, like modern man, periodically felt the desire to record his emotions or thoughts. Today everything is simple - we take a notepad and pen, or open the computer and write the required text. And many centuries ago, our ancestors used a sharp stone to carve a picture or icon on the wall of a cave. And what and with what did they write in ancient times in Rus'?
Tsera wrote - what is it?
Instead of paper, in Ancient Rus' they used ceras, which were a wooden tablet in the form of a small tray filled with wax. It was a reusable device: letters were scratched on wax, if necessary they were erased, and the cers were again ready for use.
The writings used to work with wax were made of bone, wood or metal. These ancestors of modern pencils looked like sticks up to twenty centimeters long, with a pointed end. The writings were decorated with carvings or ornaments.
Birch bark and parchment as a replacement for paper
The ceras were, so to speak, a stationary device for writing. It was inconvenient to take them with you or use them as mail. Birch bark, or birch bark, was used for these purposes. Our ancestors scratched texts on it using the same writing. They were made from birch bark and books. Initially, pieces of bark of the required size were selected, cut equally, and text was applied to them. Then the cover was made, also from birch bark. When everything was ready, the pages were punched from one edge using an awl, and a leather cord was pulled through the resulting holes, with which the ancient book was secured.
For serious literary works, chronicles, official charters, and laws, a more expensive material than birch bark was used - parchment. It came from Asia, where it was allegedly invented in the second century BC. It was made from calfskin, which underwent special dressing. Therefore, ancient books were very expensive - the raw materials were too valuable. For example, to make Bible plates in modern A4 format, it was necessary to use at least 150 calf skins.
The process of making parchment was very difficult. The skins were washed, cleaned of lint, and soaked in a lime solution. Then the wet raw material was stretched onto a wooden frame, stretched, and dried. Using special knives, the inside was thoroughly cleaned of all particles. After these manipulations, the skin was rubbed with chalk and smoothed. The final stage is bleaching, for which flour and milk were used.
Parchment was an excellent material for writing, light and durable, double-sided, and also reusable - the top layer could be easily scraped off if necessary. They wrote on it in ink.
Don't eat the berry, make ink instead
To make ink in Rus', cherry or acacia resin, that is, gum, was used. Substances were additionally added to it to give the liquid a certain color. To make black ink, soot or so-called ink nuts (special growths on oak leaves) were used. Brown color obtained after adding rust or brown iron. Sky blue gave copper sulfate, blood red - cinnabar.It could have been simpler, that is, just use natural materials. For example, blueberry juice - and beautiful purple ink is ready, elderberries and knotweed root - here you have mascara of blue color. Buckthorn made it possible to make bright purple ink, and the leaves of many plants were green.
Preparing ink cannot be called an easy task, so they were prepared immediately before use and in very little time. large quantities. If some of the liquid remained unused, it was stored in tightly closed vessels made of ceramic or wood. Usually they tried to make the ink quite concentrated, so when writing, water was added to it. This is how inkwells arose, that is, small, stable containers of a convenient shape for diluting ink and dipping pens.
A goose feather, or why a penknife is called that
When ink appeared, a new writing instrument was needed, since sticks were no longer suitable. Bird feathers were perfect for this purpose; most often they were ordinary goose feathers, durable and quite comfortable. It is interesting that they were taken from the left wing of the bird, since such a feather was more convenient to hold in the right hand. Left-handers made their own writing instruments from the right wing.
The feather had to be properly prepared: it was degreased, boiled in alkali, hardened in hot sand, and only after that it was sharpened or “repaired” with a knife. Penknife - the name came from there.
Writing with a pen was difficult; it required special skill. If used carelessly, small splashes would fly onto the parchment; if pressed too hard, the pen would spread out, creating blots. Therefore, special people were involved in writing books - scribes with beautiful, neat handwriting. They skillfully wrote out capital letters in red ink, made titles in script, decorated the pages of the book with beautiful drawings, and added ornaments to the edges.
The arrival of metal feathers to replace bird feathers
Bird feathers have served humanity for at least a millennium. It was only in 1820 that the steel pen was born. This happened in Germany, and after some time the metal feathers came to Russia.
The first metal feathers were very expensive, they were often made not just from steel, but from precious metals, and the wand itself was decorated with rubies, diamonds and even diamonds. It is clear that such a luxurious thing was available only to very rich people. Despite the appearance of metallic rivals, the goose feathers continued to squeak honestly on the paper. And only at the end of the 19th century the production of steel pens was put on stream; they appeared in almost every home where they knew how to write.
Metal pens are still used today - they are inserted into piston pens, artists use poster pens, there are even special music pens.
There is no object more familiar to us since childhood than a sheet of paper. Our children's artistic masterpieces were born on it, our birthplace. And having matured a little, we learned to write, and also diligently covered sheet after sheet with letters. Next - more. I confess - in my youth I wrote poems to the object of my first love, I trusted my heartfelt secrets to paper. Do we know what people wrote on in ancient times? I think it's romantic to write the words I LOVE YOU on a simple clay shard.
Like this interesting material I found it in the history of writing. I will be pleased if this topic is interesting to you.
Papyrus was made from reeds that grew in shallow waters in the lakes and rivers of Egypt and Syria. Large shipments of papyrus were sent through the Syrian port of Byblos. The Greek word for books is believed to come from the name of this port. The English word "paper" comes from the Greek word "papyrus".
The canes were cut lengthwise into narrow thin strips, which were placed under a press in two layers, positioning them at right angles to each other. After drying, the yellowish surface was polished using a stone or other device. The historian Pliny names several varieties of papyrus - of different thicknesses and different types with thin to transparent sheets. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyri, and therefore they were not preserved anywhere except in very arid regions, such as in the sands of Egypt or in the caves of Qumran.
Another material used for writing in the old days was parchment. Parchment was the name given to the processed skin of sheep, goats, antelopes and other animals. The word “parchment” comes from the name of the city of Pergamum in Asia Minor, since the production of this writing material was at one time particularly associated with this city. One of the varieties of parchment was material made from young calfskin.
Another material used in ancient times for writing was called velum. Typically, this type of leather was dyed purple. Many manuscripts that have survived to this day are actually made on calfskin. purple. They usually wrote on velum leather in gold or silver. Compared to papyrus, parchment lasted much longer. Copies made on parchment were much better, but also much more expensive, than papyrus manuscripts.
In addition, they were used in ancient world ostracons. This was the name given to unprocessed clay shards that were used as writing material. Many clay shards have been discovered in Egypt and Palestine.
Another writing material was stones or rocks. Archaeologists find ordinary stones on which writing was carved with a sharp metal object.
Inscriptions are also found on clay tablets, which were dried after writing in order to preserve what was written for a long time. The stone tablets of Moses were written in one of the varieties discussed above.
Wax tablets were also used. A piece of wood was covered with a thin layer of wax, which was then written on with a metal pen.
Friends, on which material from the above would you like to try to write a few lines, and perhaps even a letter, a story, or just a love confession to a loved one? Excluding paper of course.
Target
Summarize children's knowledge on the topics covered.
Equipment
For students: notebooks or albums.
For the teacher: photocopies (drawings of clay tablets, papyrus, parchment, wooden ceruses, birch bark letters), a piece of papyrus.
At the beginning of the lesson, you must remember what kind of writing was in the ancient states.
Information for teachers
Mesopotamia. Sumer. There was a lot of clay in this country. They built houses from it, made dishes, toys, and books. Square or round cakes were made from soft clay. They used a pointed stick (made of reed) to write with wedges. The sharp triangular end of a reed stick left triangular marks on the clay. This writing was later called “cuneiform.” What did you do with the cake after writing the text? Dried and fired in an oven. This way the clay was preserved longer.
Ceras
Scrolls
Novgorod birch bark documents
Papyrus
What was written on the clay tablets?
Official documents, decrees, letters, contracts. During excavations in Assyria and Babylon, libraries of clay books were found that survived even fires.
The great invention of the Egyptians - papyrus - has been preserved as a word in many languages.
Paper in Ukrainian is papir, in German – papier, in French – papier, in English – paper, in Russian – tissue paper.
The oldest papyrus dates back to 3100 BC.
One of the oldest civilizations arose in the valley of the blessed Nile. Along the banks of the river, in its delta,
An amazing marsh plant similar to reeds, papyrus, grew in abundance. This reed plant, 5 meters high, as thick as a human arm, had bare triangular stems that ended at the top with a corolla of leaves.
Complete paper production process.
Engraving
Papyrus is written material.
The Greek scholar Theophrastus wrote that the Egyptians dried papyrus roots and used them instead of wood for fuel and for crafts. The stems are used to make river boats and light vessels. The core is used to weave sails, mats, fabrics for clothing, and ropes. Papyrus is edible: it was eaten raw, boiled and baked. Juice was extracted from it. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History called papyrus the most important means
development of ancient civilization. Papyrus manufacturing technology., exposed the loose porous core, separated it with a needle into thin plates, laying them out on a slightly inclined table. Another layer of plates was laid across and moistened with a special glue made from muddy Nile water, flour and vinegar. The still wet sheets were pressed, carefully cutting off the edges. When the sheets dried, their surface was polished to a shine with pumice, bone, and smooth shells. The resulting sheets were glued together at the ends and rolled into a scroll. Its dimensions reached 40 meters. The scroll turned out to be a convenient form of book. The ancient Greeks, the entire Hellenic world, the Romans, and the Arabs accepted this form of the book without changes. The scroll dominated for several millennia. It was also used in Ancient Rus'.
Cuneiform signs
Parchment
Over time, the thickets of papyrus reed almost completely disappeared in Egypt, and many centuries ago the secret of making a wonderful writing material from it was also lost.
? How is a papyrus scroll made nowadays?
First, the lower, thickest part is cut off from the plant stem and cut into ten to twelve longitudinal parts.
? The resulting plates are exposed to the sun, and after drying, they are placed in a bath of water to dissolve the sugar, starch and other organic substances contained in the stem. After a day, they are removed from the water and rolled out with a wooden rolling pin, thus removing any remaining solution.
According to legend, the Egyptians banned the export of papyrus to the city of Pergamon, as the Pergamon library became larger and more interesting, and competed with Library of Alexandria. And then in the city of Pergamon a new writing material was invented - parchment (parchment). It was a very expensive but durable writing material.
Making parchment, especially thin and smooth, without seams or defects, was not an easy task. Finely tanned leather of young animals: goats, sheep, calves. The skin was soaked, the remaining hair was destroyed, chalk was rubbed in so that it absorbed fat, smoothed with pumice, and dried. From the 4th century parchment replaced papyrus.
Some parchment books were similar in shape to papyrus scrolls. But later the book took on a modern look. It consisted of sheets folded in half, which were combined into small groups: three, five, six. Four double sheets were called a “notebook.” Several notebooks were stapled together to form a book. The binding was wooden, covered with leather. Luxurious books were decorated with plaques made of gold, silver, enamel and precious stones. White parchment was used in Slavic manuscripts. In Western European countries - white and black. In some Greek - blue or purple.
? Parchment was brought to Rus' from Byzantium, but gradually they learned to make it in local workshops.
A wooden notebook – tsera – is a rectangular board coated with wax. They wrote on it with a bone or metal stick - a style or a pen. The writing is a rod 8–16 cm long. They were made of iron, bronze or bone.
The spatula was decorated either with an “apple” or with rollers, sometimes with figured carvings and inlays. Sometimes iron writings were covered with bronze or silver paint. One end of the style was sharp and the other was rounded. They wrote with a sharp end, and with the other they smoothed out what was written.
? It was possible to write a letter on a note and send it to a friend, who, having read it, could make amends for what had been written and write his own answer on it. The cerae were often fastened together with cords in twos, forming a “diptych” (Greek word for “folded in two”).
In order to use birch bark as a writing material, it was usually specially prepared. A birch bark leaf should have a minimum of veins. The brittle layers of bast were removed from its inner side, and the flaky surface layer was removed from the outer side.
? Then the birch bark was boiled in water with alkalis. But they wrote without it. In most cases, the text was written on the inner surface of the bark, and sometimes on the outer surface using a bone or iron stylus (writing). The stylus was a pointed rod equipped with a flat spatula on the opposite side.
Historians believe that the first master Cai Lun made paper from bamboo and mulberry tree in 105 AD. But modern Chinese historians say that paper was known long before Tsai Lun. The secret of paper production was discovered by accident. Two Chinese papermakers were captured in Samarkand, where they told them how to make paper. In the 8th century paper became known to the Arabs. Then she appeared in Byzantium. Penetrated into Spain and Italy. In the XII–XIII centuries.
paper spread throughout Western Europe.
In the XIV century. they began to make it in Rus' too.
Paper was made by hand from flax, cotton, and rags. Plant fibers and rags were soaked in a vat of paint and glue.
Stir and grind to a pulp. The master - the wallet - scooped up the pulp with a form, the bottom of which was a copper mesh, and placed it on a board above the vat. When the water drained, he laid out a wet sheet of paper on the cloth, and again covered the paper with it. Then another loose layer of paper, again cloth - and so on several times. It turned out to be several sheets. Together with the cloth they were placed under a press to squeeze out excess moisture.
In the old days, ink prepared according to various recipes was used to copy books. For example, this is how ink was made according to the recipe “On smoked ink for icon and book writing”: “first you need to get soot; They put several pots with a pierced bottom on the bricks and harden the back side so that the smoky soot goes up, and put birch bark with fire under the pots on the front side.” At the same time, it was necessary to ensure that the soot in the pots did not catch fire and to remove the accumulated layer in a timely manner. Then the soot was mixed with saliva or wine, diluted with water, and mixed with cherry glue - gum. A decoction of alder bark, red wort, ink nuts and iron was added to the resulting mixture. The ink was sealed in a jug or pot and kept warm for some time.
? Iron ink was also prepared this way: they took pieces of rusty iron, old locks, keys, chains, nails and dipped them in a decoction of alder bark with the addition of sour kvass or vinegar. “First, cut green alder barks, without moss, young, and on the fourth day put the bark in a pot, and pour water or good kvass or ash [barley] wort, and put the bark in a pot full of it, and cook in the oven, it would boil much more It would be enough, day to evening, and put a little iron in the pot, and put the pot with everything, wherever the place is cold or warm, and on the third day spill the ink.”
Has anyone tried making their own ink?
Penknife
In ancient times, a pointed reed reed served as a feather. They wrote with bone or metal pens. And bird feathers began to be used already in the Middle Ages. In Rus', they mainly used goose, swan and peacock feathers. First, the tip of the feather was split and sharpened with a knife.
Therefore, the scribe always had a penknife. Problem-confusion In the market of Pompeii one could find merchant , who in your presence could write any document or letter to birch bark dipped in red ink fountain pen . Other traders showed bull skins with finished written poems. You could also find it in some shop paper notebook and
handle
to write in it.
The Peruvian Indians came up with a knotted letter for memorization - quipu. This is a thick rope, to which multi-colored cords of different lengths and thicknesses were tied in the form of a fringe. Knots on the laces were tied simple, double, triple, and they were located either at the end of the lace, or almost at the rope itself.
When excavating cities, scientists became interested in pieces of birch bark, the top layer of birch bark. They turned out to be letters from the 10th century. Letters were not written, but were pressed out with sharpened sticks made of bone or wood. Birch bark bundle of the boy Onfim. Notebooks of a seven-year-old schoolboy. There are the alphabet, and exercises for reading by words, and various drawings.
American Indians covered animal skins with images. Raw skin - goat, sheep or calf - was soaked in water to soften it. Then they scraped off the meat with a knife and soaked it again, adding ash. After this, the wool was removed with a special scraper. Then the skin was dried, stretched on a special frame, smoothed, chalked and polished. The result was thin, slightly yellowish skin, equally smooth and clean on both sides.
The log is cleared of bark, ground into wood pulp, the mass is sifted and washed, beaten in a special machine, mixed with water and sent to a paper-making machine. Water leaves the mass through a sieve, the remaining water is removed using a pump, the sieve vibrates and the fibers adhere to each other. The wet mass passes under a round roller, pressing it into a smooth sheet. The sheet passes under many rollers, is smoothed, and dried.
Pineapple leaves - Vietnam. Eichornia - water hyacinth (weed that grows in freshwater bodies) - India. Cane waste - Cuba. Tree leaves – Hungary. From rhubarb - a sheet of paper - a schoolgirl from Denmark. Waste paper – old, unnecessary newspapers and other paper. New paper made from waste paper is very durable, beautiful, white in color, and most importantly, it will save a huge amount of first-class wood, especially coniferous wood.
CONCLUSIONS: 1.Before the invention of paper, people used various means and methods for writing. 2.We learned that paper began to be made in China, about 2000 years ago, from wood. 3. We got to know how paper is made now. 4. Having collected a collection of types of modern paper, we learned what it is called and where it is used.
LITERATURE 1. Ivich A. Adventures of inventions: Scientific and artistic stories / Fig. A. Faidel; Form. V. Lyubin. – M.: Det.lit., – 176 p.: ill. 2. Krutetskaya V.A. Reports and messages on the Russian language for primary schoolchildren. – St. Petersburg: Litera Publishing House, – 80 p.: ill. – (Elementary School Series). 3. Kublitsky G.I. The letter went on for five thousand years. For the younger one school age. Ed. - “Baby”, Pal R. A man invented a book. – M.: Sov. Russia, – 336 p.: ill. 5. Everything about everything. Popular encyclopedia for children. Company "Klyuch - S" Philological Society "WORD" Center for the Humanities at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov. AST Moscow T. 9,6,1,4 6. Book: Encyclopedia / Editorial Board: I. E. Barenbaum, A. A. Belovitskaya, A. A. Govorov and others - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, - 800 p.: ill. 7. Soviet encyclopedic dictionary. – M.: Sov. Encyclopedia, – 1600 p. 8. Dictionary of book lovers // Gorbachevsky B. S. In the land of book lovers. – M., – S To the young book lover: Dictionary-reference book / Ed. I. Ya. Linkova. – M.: Book, – 192 p.
Humanity did not know writing for most of its history. As experience and knowledge accumulated, a person began to need to remember and transfer them. It was easy to do this during direct communication, but much was lost due to the imperfection of human memory. The main obstacle was space and time, which only the imprinted word could overcome.
Now on our planet Earth, in more than two hundred states, tens of thousands of different peoples and nationalities live, which over the past centuries and millennia have formed a great variety of languages, dialects and dialects. Each of these languages, dialects and dialects required its own system of symbols and signs, which would make it possible to record acquired knowledge for future generations, keep economic records, etc.
Time passed, people changed, moved from place to place; some peoples mixed with other peoples. Along with these processes, languages also changed, and along with languages, writing also changed; from cave paintings of ancient people, symbols and hieroglyphs, to alphabets.
The modern Russian alphabet has 33 letters. But where did they come from; have there always been so many of them in the alphabet; what happened before the letters; how and with what our grandparents wrote; How difficult was it to do? We will try to answer these and other questions during our research work.
We ourselves will try to make writing instruments from various materials. Let's practice writing with charcoal and wooden sticks on clay tablets, birch bark and wax; We will use ink, quill and steel pens, and also reveal the secret of making Chinese paper by making it at home.
As a result of our fascinating journey through time, we will show how writing has changed, as well as analyze the past and try to look into the future. Let's try to predict what our descendants will write with and in what, and maybe we will write in fifty years.
Interesting? Then let's plunge together into this still unknown and unrecognized mysterious world of writing. But that's just for now. We get into the time machine and go in search of adventure and knowledge of the unknown.
SUBJECT LETTER
The first step towards modern writing was the use of objects as reminders. They did not convey the thought, but only reminded of it. Then they began to assign a specific meaning to objects:
Arrow - declaration of war;
A smoking pipe is a symbol of war or peace (accepting it meant accepting friendship and peace, rejecting it meant entering the warpath);
Cord, rope - road.
Now we will try to use objects to tell a little about ourselves. Here is our message for you:
If you don't understand, we'll explain. This letter says: “MOM, DAD AND WE (SISTERS) –
INSEPARABLE FRIENDLY FAMILY. WE LOVE ANIMALS VERY MUCH
AND WE HAVE A CAT - QUEEN. »
Well, mom, dad, me, sister and cat - it’s clear. A
the white scarf that surrounds us all means peace, friendship and our unity (we always do everything
together and support each other in everything).
Such substantive writing can be found even now – in our modern life. For example, a shoemaker hangs a boot on his sign, and the goods that the store sells are displayed in store windows. And every person passing by, regardless of the language he speaks, understands what is sold in this store.
Ring on the ring finger right hand is a symbol of marriage.
Bouquets of flowers also speak to us:
The sunflower speaks of secret sympathy;
Red rose - declares his love;
Lilies - promises sincere friendship;
Tulip means success and glory, that is, someone wishes you good luck;
Yellow daffodils mean envy and deception;
Violets - express hope and modesty;
Poppies - trying to make amends for the quarrel;
Chamomile - promises to be your support
Even an ordinary traffic light on the road is also a type of subject writing. Depending on the burning color, everyone understands what to do - walk, wait or stand.
It can be assumed that this type of writing is very convenient, because it should be understood by people all over the planet (Russians, Germans, and French)! But such substantive writing also has its drawbacks. For example, my mother sends me this message:
Of course, I understand that my mother invites me for a cup of tea. I run to the kitchen - there is no one there! It turns out that I was mistaken - my mother wanted to ask me in such a letter to make tea for her. These are the kinds of misunderstandings that occur when reading a substantive letter, because it is possible to read them in different ways.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) spoke about one such substantive message. He wrote that the Scythians sent unusual gifts to the Persians, with whom they were fighting. They were a frog, a mouse, a bird and five arrows. (The animals and birds were alive, real.) The Persians found themselves in difficulty. They had to understand the symbolic meaning of the gifts sent.
The Persian king Darius I saw (or wanted to see) in this message a sign of the submission of his enemies. He decided that in this way the Scythians would admit their defeat: the mouse and the frog, living in the earth and water, symbolize the earth and water elements, which the Scythians give him into possession. The bird, according to the king, could be a symbol of the enemy’s quick flight, and the arrows could be a symbol of refusal to resist.
One of the king’s close associates deciphered this living message in a completely different way: “If you Persians do not learn to jump through the swamps like frogs, hide in holes like mice, and fly like birds, then you will all die, showered with our arrows.” The court sage was right. The Scythians defeated the Persians in this war.
Subject “writing” is an accessible means of communication for peoples or tribes speaking different languages. To create it it is used simplest form conditional connection between an object and a concept (frog - “jump”, bird - “fly”). However, it is still impossible to read, or rather, correctly interpret such a message without special hints and additional information.
It is necessary to have an understanding of the culture and thinking of the authors of the message, and to take into account specific events related to its composition. It is no coincidence that the Persian king and the court sage “read” the Scythian message in the opposite way. Probably, the interpreter-servant was well aware of the courage and belligerence of the Scythians, with whom the Persians went to war.
Another type of subject writing is memorizing numbers using notches on trees and staffs, as well as using knots on cords.
An interesting example of object writing is the ancient Inca kip. Considered one of the world's great civilizations, the Inca Empire lasted from 1400 to 1532 AD. An ancient people lived in the Andes, along the west coast of South America.
A quipu is a thick rope or stick on which cords with knots and weaves are strung. The weight of the khipu reached four kilograms. For the Indians, each color had a specific meaning. Black meant misfortune, purple - danger or enmity, red - army or war, white - silver or an offer of peace, yellow - gold, green - grain. A simple knot conveyed the numeral 10, a double knot conveyed 100, and a triple knot conveyed 1000.
By arranging colors and knots in various combinations, the Indians conveyed a large number of messages. Some scientists believe that codes of law, chronicles and even poetry could have been written on the kippah.
LANGUAGE OF FIGURES (PICTOGRAPHY)
The first human drawings found by scientists were made 40-10 thousand years ago. Ancient man carved on stone, carved on bones, and painted the outlines of animals on the walls of caves with paint and charcoal.
Stone Age people, who lived about 15-20 thousand years ago, covered the walls of their caves with amazingly realistic images of bison, mammoths, fallow deer, wild boars, mountain goats, rhinoceroses, horses, deer, and people.
The artistic technique of that time was very diverse: drawing lines with fingers on clay, carving on all kinds of supports, painting itself, carried out by the most different ways– spraying liquid paint, applying it with a brush, combining paint and carving on the same image.
Various mineral dyes were used to prepare paints. Yellow, red and brown paints were usually prepared from ocher, black and dark brown - from manganese oxide. White paint was produced from kaolin, various shades of yellow-red color were produced from limonite and hematite, and charcoal produced niello. The binder in most cases was water, less often fat.
Now we will visit the Stone Age and try to learn how to write in the language of drawings, as the ancient people wrote. For this we needed coal and wallpaper (we won’t dirty the walls of the house).
We imagine that we are hunters who have returned home after a long search for prey. And we splash out everything we see on the wall of our cave. In the drawings we will tell you where we visited, how we tracked prey and what animals we met.
We went hunting early in the morning. First we saw large, hairy mammoths threatening us with their fangs. Then various other animals crept up on us from the other side. We were surrounded on all sides!
But we shot down a couple of animals with branched antlers (deer). When we returned home, the stars illuminated our path.
This is how the story turned out. Our best results were mammoths - large, hairy and realistic. Such an atmosphere was created - we felt like real ancient people. It was not difficult to apply the pictography, but on the contrary, it was even easy and fun to draw. But if you take into account the fact that ancient people first carved a design on stone and then painted it over, then this is a very huge amount of work!
Still, the modern way of writing is more convenient, because people understand drawings differently.
I wonder if pictography exists now – in our modern times? Let's arm ourselves with a camera and go hunting again, but this time not for animals, but for “modern” pictographs.
At school, on the electrical panel - “Caution! High voltage".
At home, on clothes - “hand wash”, “do not bleach”, “iron at medium temperature”,
“Do not dry clean,” “Do not wring or tumble dry.”
On a soft toy - “recyclable”
On the mosquito repellent - “The sign - a basket or a person throwing the packaging into a basket, reminds you of the need to throw the packaging into special containers, from where the garbage ends up in a waste treatment plant.”
On the medicine - “Method of use”.
Road sign – “Vehicle traffic indicator”.
Road sign - “Pedestrian crossing”.
Road sign - “Caution children.”
Pharmacy sign.
Barber shop sign.
As a result of our research, we discovered that people still use pictography today! The most common pictograms are road signs, images of goods on signs of shops and workshops.
HIEROGLYPHS
At first, people drew what they wanted to convey or remember. But gradually the drawings turned into icons, each denoting a word. Such icons are called hieroglyphs
The word "hieroglyph" originally meant "sacred writing." Now we use this word to describe the writing system that was used in ancient times in Egypt, and in our time in China and Japan.
The hieroglyphs of Egypt are very interesting and mysterious, depicting people and gods, animals and plants, celestial bodies and household utensils and much, much more.
Egypt. Karnak Temple.
There were approximately seven hundred hieroglyphs in Egypt. Their very specific appearance (birds, snakes, little men, various objects) for a long time supported the idea among European scientists that these signs are symbolic. The truth was discovered in 1822 by Francois Champollion.
Legend has it that at the age of 11, when he first saw ancient Egyptian inscriptions in a collection of antiquities brought from the banks of the Nile, Francois said: “I will read this when I grow up!”
Champollion's entire subsequent life was aimed at achieving this goal. He mastered many ancient languages, studied PAPYRUS MAKING
ancient history. In 1807, a seventeen-year-old boy gave a report on Ancient Egypt at the Grenoble Academy. It took another fifteen long years to prepare for the main event in the life of the scientist. Dense thickets of reeds covered the shores. And now - victory! Method of reading the ancient Egyptian writing of the Nile.
The reed was cut down, and its stem was cut into thin plates of the same size.
Only six years after his brilliant discovery, Champollion first came to the Nile Valley. Crowds local residents They came together to look at a foreigner who could read the inscriptions on the walls of the ancient pyramids, a foreigner who “gave” Egypt. Water-soaked plates tightly packed its history. in a row; the rows were superimposed on each other.
Hieroglyphic writing, finally developed by 3200 BC. BC e. , existed without any special changes until the 3rd century. n. e. Consisting of very beautiful signs, it could easily be engraved on a variety of surfaces: on the walls of temples, tombs, the resulting layer of plates on steles, statues and other objects. This letter was used mainly for hammering and thinning.
religious and official texts. However, hieroglyphs were not well suited for everyday use, and therefore scribes began to use significantly simplified characters - the so-called “hieratic” writing, which became widespread in everyday life. They were drawn up. Finally, the surface was smoothed out. And after letters, bills, administrative acts. Scribes wrote with black or red ink to dry, resulting in a light brown sheet of not only papyrus, but also fragments of stones and clay shards (ostracons). colors.
The Egyptians loved to carve inscriptions on the walls of pyramids, sculptures, and sarcophagi. But for everyday purposes they found a good writing material - papyrus. It was made from Nile reed. The sheets were glued together at the edge and turned into
The most convenient form of a book made from papyrus, a brittle and brittle material, was a scroll. scrolls on which one could write as
They wrote on papyrus with a stick or brush. along and across.
Nowadays, there are still papyrus factories in Egypt. We visited one of them this summer.
Papyrus in such factories is now produced exclusively for tourists.
They told us and showed us how papyrus is made. The most amazing thing is that reed soaked in water is very, very light.
Gradually, a syllabary alphabet emerged from hieroglyphs: in it, each sign is a whole syllable (Ancient Egypt thousands of years ago).
The Phoenicians (residents of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, excellent sailors and successful merchants) went even further - they invented letters and became the “inventors of the alphabet.” Their alphabet consisted of 22 simplified characters. Each letter is one sound. But they only wrote down consonants. The Phoenicians wrote from right to left, and now they write this way in Arab countries.
The ancient Greeks became familiar with the Phoenician script, but added new letters to it to denote vowel sounds. This is how the world’s first real alphabet appeared (Ancient Greece, 1st millennium BC). The Greek alphabet already had 24 letters representing both consonants and vowels.
The creators of the Slavic alphabet are the brothers Cyril and Methodius. The year 863 is considered the year of birth of the Slavic alphabet. The creation of the Slavic alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet.
Brothers Constantine and Methodius were born in Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki in Greek) in the family of a military leader, received a good education. Cyril studied in Constantinople at the court of the Byzantine Emperor Michael III, knew Greek, Slavic, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic well, taught philosophy, for which he received the nickname Philosopher. Methodius was on military service, then for several years he ruled one of the regions inhabited by the Slavs; subsequently retired to a monastery.
In 860, the brothers had already made a trip to the Khazars for missionary and diplomatic purposes. To be able to preach Christianity in the Slavic language, it was necessary to translate the Holy Scriptures into the Slavic language; however, there was no alphabet capable of conveying Slavic speech at that moment.
Constantine set about creating the Slavic alphabet. Methodius, who also knew the Slavic language well, helped him in his work, since a lot of Slavs lived in Thessaloniki (the city was considered half-Greek, half-Slavic). In 863, the Slavic alphabet was created (the Slavic alphabet existed in two versions: the Glagolitic alphabet - from verb - “speech” and the Cyrillic alphabet; until now, scientists do not have a consensus which of these two options was created by Cyril). With the help of Methodius, books were translated from Greek into Slavic. The Slavs were given the opportunity to read and write in their own language. The Slavs not only acquired their own Slavic alphabet, but also the first Slavic literary language was born, many words of which still live in Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages.
Slavic alphabet
The Slavic alphabet contains a secret message. In order to understand the secret writing of the Slavic alphabet, it is necessary not just to skim through it, but to read carefully into each letter-word. After all, each letter-word contains a semantic core that Konstantin put into it. This is what he wanted to tell us:
I know the letters:
Writing is an asset.
Work hard, people of earth,
As befits reasonable people -
Comprehend the universe!
Carry your word with conviction -
Knowledge is a gift from God!
Dare to delve into
Comprehend the existing light! .
More than 500 years ago, it took months, or even years, to write or rewrite a thick book and even decorate it with drawings. It is not surprising that handwritten books were very expensive. In addition, some of them dressed in expensive leather, brocade, and sometimes silver. Often, the owners of such books chained them to shelves to prevent them from being stolen.
Ivan Fedorov printed the first Russian alphabet in 1574 in Lvov. In their books, he and other printers used letters that looked similar to the old handwritten ones.
Peter I carried out the first reform of Russian writing. He removed a number of unnecessary letters from the alphabet, and also introduced a new style (St. Petersburg, early 18th century). We still use this new font, the civil alphabet.
Over three centuries, the Russian alphabet has undergone a number of reforms. The number of letters generally decreased, with the exception of the letters “e” and “y” (used earlier, but legalized in the 18th century) and the only “author’s” letter - “e”, proposed by Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. The last major reform of Russian writing was carried out in 1917-1918 (see Russian spelling reform of 1918), resulting in the modern Russian alphabet, consisting of 33 letters.
The possibility of further reduction of letters in our alphabet cannot be ruled out. For example, the letters “E”, “E”, “Yu”, “I” can be written “ye”, “yo”, “yu”, “ya”. And the softness or hardness of letters is indicated by some kind of dash. Thus, only 27 letters - sounds - will remain in the alphabet.
WHAT DID PEOPLE WRITE ON?
Now it is clear to us how alphabetic writing developed. Now let's go back to the time when people came up with hieroglyphs and icons. The thought of books had not yet arisen. People wrote on smoothly planed tablets, on clay tiles, on palm leaves, and on animal skins. They wrote on the material that was easier to find or produce.
The oldest writing material is parchment, fresh lamb skin. The slaves had to suffer a lot in order for the parchment strip to turn out well: they washed it, scraped off all the fat from the skin, dipped it in slaked lime, dried on a wooden frame and polished. The result was thin, slightly yellowish skin, equally smooth and clean on both sides. Only after such processing was it possible to write on parchment.
Sometimes the parchment was painted blue, purple or black. They wrote on such parchment with gold dust ground with water and glue. The thinner the parchment, the more valuable it was.
Parchment was expensive, and gradually it was no longer used.
The first clay writing tablets appeared in Mesopotamia. The scribe took a damp tablet with a smooth surface and pressed text onto it with a stick. Then the board was dried in the sun or fired in a kiln. After that, it was coated with a layer of clay and the name of the recipient was written on it. Then there was a second firing. Due to the release of steam, the inner plate peeled off from the “envelope” and found itself enclosed in it, like a nut kernel in a shell.
Now we will travel back in time and try to pee on clay tablets. To do this, we bought clay at the store and prepared brushes (we will write with the pointed end).
It’s easier to write with toothpicks! It also fixes errors very well. If I didn’t like what I wrote, I wet my finger and erased it.
Once our clay tablets were written, we left them to dry. And the next day they baked them like pies in the oven. This is how beautiful we got.
Clay tablets were fragile and heavy, and people began to look for other writing materials.
In ancient Egypt they wrote on papyrus. We have already written about its production method above. The raw material for it was cane. Thin, flexible and transparent strips about fifty centimeters long were separated from the lower part of the reed, which was in the water. They were laid in rows so that the strips were connected by the edges. When a square was obtained, another layer of stripes was placed on it, but this time perpendicular to the first. The entire sheet was dried and sanded using a shell or piece Ivory. It was then soaked in vegetable glue and beaten with a mallet to make it thin. After this, the sheet was dried in the sun. The scribe drew hieroglyphs on the carefully polished and smooth surface of papyrus. He used water paints as ink.
Learning to write and read hieroglyphs was a very difficult task. In addition to labor and time, this required considerable ability. Therefore, the scribe in Egypt enjoyed great respect and honor. Scribes often held high positions, among them were ministers, philosophers, architects, scientists
For all its good qualities, papyrus was still fragile, and it was not easy to make. And despite this, it was used for a very long time, longer than many other materials suitable for writing.
The Romans and Greeks also wrote on lead sheets, and later on wax tablets. The wax tablet had some advantages over clay tablets, papyrus, and lead sheets. The tablet was made of boxwood, beech or ivory and was slightly hollowed out like a saucer. Melted wax, painted dark, was poured into the recess. The wax quickly hardened, and then the scribe applied marks to it. After reading such a letter, one could erase it and write an answer on the same wax.
I wonder if it was difficult to write on wax? There is only one way to check - your own experience. To do this, we take a wooden board and fill it with melted wax (candle). Pour the wax so that you get an even layer on top of the board. After the wax hardens, let's try to pee
The finished wax tablet turned out very similar to a chocolate bar.
Writing on a wax tablet is not very convenient. When you scratch the wax on top, wax shavings appear and must be constantly removed. You have to press hard with a toothpick and scratch the same element of the letter more than once.
The wax tablet suffered and was very significant disadvantage: She could not guarantee long-term preservation of the text. However, she lived for quite a long time. Even in the 12th century, a factory producing such tablets was still operating in Paris.
In Ancient Rus', such cheap and accessible material as birch bark was widely used for private correspondence and personal records.
And we will also try to pee on birch bark. First, the birch bark must be prepared for writing. Carefully remove the top rough layer of birch bark so that you get a smooth surface on which you can write. We will write by squeezing letters on the surface with pointed sticks. Previously, these sticks were made of bone, but we will make them wooden.
So hard! After a few words, the hand gets very tired. You need to press the birch bark very hard with the stick. But the text on the surface is clearly visible.
The appearance of paper was a very important historical milestone in the cultural development of mankind. She immediately expanded the use of writing, which until that time had remained the property of only kings, their associates and a small circle of scientists.
Paper was invented in China. The credit for this great invention is attributed to the Chinese Chai Lun, who lived approximately two thousand years ago. But several historical information suggest that paper was known in China before it.
Chai Lun made paper from silk. Apparently, he considered it most suitable for this purpose, since silk had previously been the main material for writing. This explains that most of the ancient Chinese literary monuments are written on silk scrolls.
Then flax and hemp rags and tree bark were used to make paper.
Now we will travel back in time and travel to China to see everything with our own eyes. We take an old sheet and cut it into small pieces (in China, linen was torn, but we will try to speed up the paper making process). We tried so hard that we all ended up with calluses on our fingers from the scissors. It turned out to be a whole mountain of rags. I can’t even believe that paper can come out of this. But we don’t stop. We throw everything into the pan, fill it with water and cook. The fibers must separate for this to work. Only after 12 hours of cooking did our sheet turn into mush. After all our mixture has cooled, we proceed to forming sheets of paper. Squeeze out the pulp and place it on tiles, cover the top with a second tile, on which we install dad’s dumbbells (it looks like a press). After about an hour, we remove the press and the top tile so that our “Chinese” paper can dry. And in the morning, when the paper leaves had dried, we removed the second tile. Everything went well! But what came out can hardly be called, in our time, paper. Most likely it's cardboard. The result was thick, dense sheets that felt like cardboard to the touch (or maybe dad’s dumbbells weren’t heavy enough?) with a rough surface. Still, this is a victory; before we couldn’t even think that it was possible to make paper from a sheet. We're just magicians!
Now is the time to start learning Chinese. Let's write a few hieroglyphs on our “Chinese” paper.
We looked through a lot of different Chinese characters and finally chose “Red Forest” and “flower”. And as soon as you can remember - which hieroglyph means this or that word? Very carefully, using brushes, we write the selected words with red paint. The surface of the paper is uneven, so we need great attention, accuracy, patience and precision. If you depict at least one stick higher or lower, to the right or to the left, you get a completely different word.
Now we have finished our experiment. Writing hieroglyphs on “Chinese” paper is also very interesting and exciting. Now we know how to write two Chinese characters: “red forest” (above) and “flower” (below).
I wonder - if you wash this paper, you can probably write on it again? But we will leave this experiment for later. Let's return to the history and theory about the Chinese secret of paper production.
The Chinese jealously guarded the secret of paper production. Anyone guilty of revealing the secret was threatened with the death penalty. But there are no eternal secrets in the world. The time has come, and the secret of paper making penetrated into Muslim countries. It was in 751, when the Arabs defeated the Chinese army and the captured Chinese told the victors about this secret.
From the Arabs the secret spread among the European peoples. The first paper production in Europe arose in the 11th century in Spain, in the city of Valencia. Spanish paper penetrated into France and Italy in the 13th century. At first it was used only for notarial acts. And not because they treated it with distrust, but because of its high cost.
Gradually, paper production improved. The merit of the Italians is especially great for this. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the papermaking workshops in the city of Fabriano were the best in Europe. Paper became cheap, accessible and produced in large quantities. It has become an ideal writing material in all countries.
WHAT PEOPLE WRITTEN
Slowly but steadily, along with the improvement of the material for writing, the instrument with which signs were made became more convenient. At first, these were hard granite sticks-cutters; they were used to make marks on stones and on the walls of caves. Then sharpened wooden sticks appeared - they were used to write on parchment, papyrus, clay and wax tablets.
In some countries - Italy, England, France, Spain - they wrote with silver and lead sticks. But when paper began to spread, the need arose for another material that could leave a mark on the sheet. In Italy they began to use sticks made of black clay slate. This slate was called “karatash” - “black stone”. This is where the name of our pencil comes from.
In 1565, graphite deposits were discovered in England. Blocks of this soft stone were sawn into thin plates and made into slates. The graphite deposit was then considered the only one in the world, and the king’s government feared that it would be depleted. Graphite was used very sparingly. It was only allowed to mine it for six weeks a year. And yet, after two centuries the deposits were almost exhausted. I had to return to silver and lead sticks again.
Pure graphite pencils were large and brittle. In 1795, the Frenchman Conte applied a very successful rationalization: he mixed graphite dust with a special sticky clay. The pencil turned out to be durable, and the mark on the paper did not lose its clarity. They began to make a thin rod from such a mixture and “dress” it in a wooden shirt. The savings in graphite were enormous, and the pencil itself became stronger and more convenient. This is how it has survived to this day.
And graphite deposits were discovered in one country or another. In Russia, huge deposits of it were found in Siberia, in the Sayan Mountains. In terms of its qualities, our Russian graphite is one of the best in the world.
Starting from the 17th and especially the 18th centuries, when epistolary literature began to flourish along with the widespread use of paper, it became fashionable to write in ink. The ink itself was known back in the time of Emperor Augustus. At that time, there was even red ink, which was considered sacred in Rome.
The appearance of ink is associated with the appearance of parchment - it required a composition that would eat into the skin. Scientists have established the most common recipes for making ink. An infusion was made from growths on diseased oak and elm leaves and mixed with iron sulfate. These growths - the so-called "ink nuts" - contained the tannin substance tannin. Subsequently, tannin was found in other plants - in reed, in common viburnum, in the Mexican logwood tree.
In Rus', there were also many ways to prepare ink. In the 15th century, scribes even made them “from good kvass and sour cabbage soup infused with rusty iron.” Birch soot was in great use. And in the villages, elderberry, crushed in a mortar, was used for ink.
When ink began to be used for writing, instead of any sticks, some new tool was required. In eastern countries they began to write with “kalam” - a hollow reed. The tip was split, and ink gradually flowed down it. This reed in its structure already resembled our pen. For several hundred years, the kalam left Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek and Latin letters, and Arabic script on parchment, papyrus and paper.
The kalam was replaced by a bird's feather sharpened in a certain way. Feathers used were goose or crow. They wrote on paper with goose feathers, which had to be first cut obliquely, sharpened and split with a penknife.
The quill pen has been used for many centuries. Copernicus and Garibaldi, Shakespeare and Lomonosov, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Pushkin wrote to them.
It is very difficult to write with a pen. We sometimes ended up with small blots. Much easier to write ballpoint pen. When you write with a quill pen, you need to hold your breath so that you don’t get a blot. There is no need to press down on the paper, otherwise you will end up with very thick lines. The pen must even be held at a certain angle, otherwise the ink will not be written on the paper, but everything will be smudged. After we tried to write with a pen and plunged into the atmosphere of the past, it immediately became clear to us how difficult it was to write then.
The first steel pen appeared around 1820 in Germany. From there it came to France, Russia and other countries. It was expensive, and this cost increased even more from the fact that the wand with a steel, gold or yakhont feather was often decorated with diamonds, rubies, diamonds and other jewelry. This luxury was available only to aristocrats and the rich, and therefore a cheap quill pen competed with a metal pen for a long time.
Let's try to write with a pen with a metal nib. I (Angelina) will write phrases that are read from left to right and vice versa in the same way (it turns out there are so many of them!). And I (Nastya) will write a poem of my own composition.
It is a little easier to write with a fountain pen than with a quill pen. The nib could break when you press it, but a fountain pen doesn't break because it has an iron tip. But sometimes blots still turned out. We had very good impressions, sometimes it felt as if we were really living in those times when we wrote with a pen, which was much more difficult than in modern times.
Only after we tried to write with pen and ink ourselves did it become clear how difficult it was to write an entire book! For example, you have already written half of the book and made a blot, you have to rewrite everything - everything you wrote, from beginning to end. And if you accidentally end up with a blot again, or write the wrong letter, or make a mistake, rewrite everything again. It is very difficult to write an entire book without a single mistake or blot. We realized how complicated everything was then and how much respect, admiration, patience, perseverance, and knowledge the scribes had. We have these memorable moments in our minds and it’s like we took a ride in a time machine.
At the end of the last century, metal feathers began to be produced using stamping factory machines. At that time they won the final victory over goose feathers.
All steel nibs had to be dipped in ink, and many improvements were made to their design so that they could write longer with just one dip. Some nibs were made with spoon-shaped indentations and grooves that retained some ink when the quill was dipped into the inkwell. When the ink on the pen ran out, a little more flowed from the recess through the grooves to the tip. Another method was to make a pen with the "wings" facing down to trap the ink underneath. Some feathers were made as if they were double; the idea was that there should be a certain amount of ink left between the top and chain nibs.
All these attempts once again emphasized the long-overdue need for a pen that would have its own supply of ink. This need was satisfied in 1883 when Lewis Edson Waterman, a New Yorker, produced the first usable fountain pen.
In the 1940s, brothers Laszlo and Georg Biro invented the ballpoint pen as we know it today. In 1943, the first commercial samples were produced. During World War II, the British government acquired Laszlo's patent. Ballpoint pens began to be used by navigators in aviation and officers in difficult combat conditions
In the 60s, felt tips for writing instruments were invented in Japan. Pens with felt tips are called "felt-tip pens" ("flowmaster" from the English flow - to flow). Felt tips are most widespread in the well-known fluorescent markers.
In the 80s and 90s, roller skates appeared. In essence, this is a “thinner” and more advanced technology of ballpoint pens. Thin ball and less thick ink. In the early 90s, rollerball technology was greatly improved. An unprecedented variety of instruments and companies appeared.
CONCLUSION
Our unique and fascinating journey into the mysterious world of writing has come to an end.
As a result of our research work, we discovered that in our modern world, methods of transmitting information that were used before the invention of the alphabet are widely used. Thus, subject writing and the language of drawings are currently very popular in the design of shop windows and store signs.
In addition, our “time travel” showed that you can write with anything and on anything. The only question is: what and what is more convenient to write on?
What we liked most was writing on plain paper with a steel pen and a ballpoint pen, although it is easier to write with a ballpoint pen.
Humanity has come a long way in order to create such writing material as paper. The walls of the caves of primitive people, clay tablets, wax tablets, birch bark - nothing can compete with paper, which is light and elastic, it is not fragile, so it can be easily rolled. Thanks to these properties, paper can be used to make various crafts, such as origami.
Over time, with the advent of new technologies and writing instruments, writing and transmitting information will become even easier. Pens have already been invented that can be used to write without squeezing them with your fingers. This is achieved using a special handle shape that was invented by the Japanese. And who is now not familiar with the global computer network Internet?
Letters and short messages are now written and sent via e-mail using a computer. With the help of special computer programs they paint entire pictures, design houses and garden plots, and many many others.
Maybe a little more time will pass and a person will be able to send thoughts to another person, like files or graphic images? After all, it has been scientifically proven that a person uses only 10 percent of the total volume of brain resources. Who knows, maybe we will be the ones who have to master new technologies for writing, transmitting and storing information?! Wait and see!!!
