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Codices
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex, much like the modern book, is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges by a variety of methods over the centuries, yet in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback or softback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Codices
Maya codices (singular ''codex'') are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such as the Tonsured Maize God and the Howler Monkey Gods. Most of the codices were destroyed by conquistadors and Catholic priests in the 16th century. The codices have been named for the cities where they eventually settled. The Dresden codex is generally considered the most important of the few that survive. The Maya made paper from the inner bark of a certain wild fig tree, '' Ficus cotinifolia''. This sort of paper was generally known by the word ''huun'' in Mayan languages (the Aztec people far to the north used the word '' āmatl'' for paper). The Maya developed their ''huun''-paper around the 5th century, which is roughly the same time that the codex became predominant over the scroll in the Roman world. Maya paper was mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aztec Codices
Aztec codices ( nah, Mēxihcatl āmoxtli , sing. ''codex'') are Mesoamerican manuscripts made by the pre-Columbian Aztec, and their Nahuatl-speaking descendants during the colonial period in Mexico. History Before the start of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Mexica and their neighbors in and around the Valley of Mexico relied on painted books and records to document many aspects of their lives. Painted manuscripts contained information about their history, science, land tenure, tribute, and sacred rituals. According to the testimony of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Moctezuma had a library full of such books, known as ''amatl'', or ''amoxtli,'' kept by a ''calpixqui'' or nobleman in his palace, some of them dealing with tribute. After the conquest of Tenochtitlan, indigenous nations continued to produce painted manuscripts, and the Spaniards came to accept and rely on them as valid and potentially important records. The native tradition of pictorial document ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, but less permanent, methods for binding books include loose-leaf rings, individual screw-posts (binding posts), twin loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs. For protection, the bound stack of signatures is wrapped in a flexible cover or is attached to stiffened boards. Finally, an attractive cover is placed onto the boards, which includes the publisher's information, and artistic decorations. The trade of binding books is in two parts; (i) stationery binding (vellum binding) for books intended for handwritten entries, such as accounting ledgers, business journals, blank-page books, and guest logbooks, and notebooks, manifold books, day books, diaries, and portfolios. (ii) letterpress printing and binding deals with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papyrus
Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book. Papyrus is first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty), as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region. Apart from a writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in the construction of other artifacts, such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. History Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE.H. Idris Bell and T.C. Skeat, 1935"Papyrus and its uses"(British Museum pamphlet). The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scroll
A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyrus or parchment glued together at the edges. Scrolls may be marked divisions of a continuous roll of writing material. The scroll is usually unrolled so that one page is exposed at a time, for writing or reading, with the remaining pages rolled and stowed to the left and right of the visible page. Text is written in lines from the top to the bottom of the page. Depending on the language, the letters may be written left to right, right to left, or alternating in direction (boustrophedon). History Scrolls were the first form of editable record keeping texts, used in Eastern Mediterranean ancient Egyptian civilizations. Parchment scrolls were used by the Israelites among others before the codex or bound book with parchment pages was invented b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parchment
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs and young calves. It may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between ''parchment'' and the more-restricted term ''vellum'' (see below). Parchment and vellum Today the term ''parchment'' is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension. The term originally referred only to the skin of sheep and, occasionally, goats. The equivalent material made from calfskin, which was of finer quality, was known as ''vellum'' (from the Old French or , and ultimately from the Latin , meaning a calf); while the finest of all was ''uterine vellum'', taken from a calf foetus or still ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vellum
Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other animals, or otherwise being of higher quality. Vellum is prepared for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, codices, or books. Modern scholars and custodians increasingly use only the less specific, potentially-confusing term "membrane".Stokes and Almagno 2001, 114Clemens and Graham 2007, pp. 9–10. Depending on factors such as the method of preparation it may be very hard to determine the animal species involved (let alone its age) without using a laboratory, and the term avoids the need to distinguish between vellum and parchment. Vellum is generally smooth and durable, although there are great variations depending on preparation and the quality of the skin. The manufacture involves the cleaning, bleaching, stretching ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include ''any'' written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts. Manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, music notation, explanatory figures, or illustrations. Terminology The study of the writing in surviving manuscripts, the "hand", is termed palaeography (or paleography). The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS., ms or ms. for singular, and MSS., mss or ms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Printing Press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink, and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium. In Germany, around 1440, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by History of typography in East Asia, hand-printing and a few by scribe, hand-copying. Gutenberg's newly devised matrix (printing), hand mould made possible the precise and ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561 epigrams, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets. Martial has been called the greatest Latin epigrammatist, and is considered the creator of the modern epigram. Early life Knowledge of his origins and early life are derived almost entirely from his works, which can be more or less dated according to the well-known events to which they refer. In Book X of his ''Epigrams'', composed between 95 and 98, he mentions celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday; hence he was born during March 38, 39, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford Dictionary Of Byzantium
The ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'' (ODB) is a three-volume historical dictionary published by the English Oxford University Press. With more than 5,000 entries, it contains comprehensive information in English on topics relating to the Byzantine Empire. It was edited by Alexander Kazhdan, and was first published in 1991.''The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1991. Kazhdan was a professor at Princeton University who became a Senior Research Associate at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, before his death. He contributed to many of the articles in the Dictionary and always signed his initials ''A.K.'' at the end of the article to indicate his contribution. Description The dictionary is available in printed and e-reference text versions from Oxford Reference Online. It covers the main historical events of Byzantium, as well as important social and religious events. It also includes biographies of eminent political and literary personal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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