Text Formats: Cuneiform, Papyrus, Medieval Manuscript
The earliest known form of written information, cuneiform, originated in the Mesopotamia region around 2900 BCE. Cuneiform was not exclusive to a single culture or language, appearing over time in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Old Persian, and other languages. Cuneiform symbols were used to represent syllabograms, or word sections, and logograms, entire words. A stylus was used to etch soft clay which was then fired to create durable tablets. The cuneiform tablets displayed are thought to date back to around 2000 BCE and originate from the Sumerian city of Ur. These tablets were donated to Lehigh University by Harvey Bassler, 1908. Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets are preserved in museums and libraries around the world.
Another common medium of written information in the ancient world was papyrus, made from the stem of the Cyperus papyrus plant, which was common in the Nile Delta region. As papyri was used for thousands of years, they may contain writing in hieroglyphics, Greek, or Latin. Unlike clay tablets, papyrus is fragile and can be harmed by moisture, dryness or other physical damage.
Writing on animal skins, or parchment or vellum dates as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE, however the industrial production of parchment, particularly in Pergamon, Greece, around the 2nd century BCE was novel. While animal skin was more labor intensive to process compared to papyrus, it was significantly more durable. Around the same time that parchment started to replace papyrus, the codex began to replace the scroll as the predominant format of the written word. On display is a single leaf of parchment from a medieval manuscript. This leaf was part of a collection donated by John Hirsh, a lifelong collector of medieval manuscripts, who received his Ph.D. from Lehigh in 1970.
