FINAL HISTORY AND CULTURE ON BOOKS

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The authors of Antiquity had no rights concerning their published works; there were neither authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could have a text recopied, and even alter its contents. Scribes earned money and authors earned mostly glory, unless a patron provided cash; a book made its author immortal. This followed the traditional conception of the culture: an author stuck to several models, which he imitated and attempted to improve. The status of the author was not regarded as absolutely personal.

From a political and religious point of view, books were censored very early: the works of Pytagoras were burned because he was a proponent of agnosticism and argued that one could know whether or not the gods existed. Generally, cultural conflicts led to important periods of book destruction: in 303, the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of Christian texts. Some Christians later burned libraries, and especially heretical or non-canonical Christian texts. These practices are found throughout human history but have ended in many nations today. A few nations today still greatly censor and even burn books.

But there also exists a less visible but nonetheless effective form of censorship when books are reserved for the elite; the book was not originally a medium for expressive liberty. It may serve to confirm the values of a political system, as during the reign of the emperor Augustus, who skillfully surrounded himself with great authors. This is a good ancient example of the control of the media by a political power. More importantly, private censorship of books has occurred and continues today. What books one chooses to privately read, to destroy, to throw away, to not sell, and what to pass along to their children involves choosing some books over others. Private individuals can and do censor themselves and others, with little or no support and approval from the governing bodies of their time.

Proliferation and conservation of books in Greece

Little information concerning books in Ancient Greece survives. Several vases (Sixth century BC and fifth century BC) bear images of volumina. There was undoubtedly no extensive trade in books, but there existed several sites devoted to the sale of books.

The spread of books, and attention to their cataloging and conservation, as well as literary criticism developed during the Hellenistic period with the creation of large libraries in response to the desire for knowledge exemplified by Aristotle. These libraries were undoubtedly also built as demonstrations of political prestige:

§     The Library of Alexandria, a library created by Ptolemy Soter and set up by Demetrius Phalereus (Demetrius of Phaleron). It contained 500,900 volumes (in the Museion section) and 40,000 at the Serapis temple (Serapeion). All books in the luggage of visitors to Egypt were inspected, and could be held for copying. The Museion was partially destroyed in 47 BC.

§     The Library at Pergamon, founded by Attalus I; it contained 200,000 volumes which were moved to the Serapeion by Mark Antony and Cleopatra, after the destruction of the Museion. The Serapeion was partially destroyed in 391, and the last books disappeared in 641 CE following the Arab conquest.

§     The Library at Athens, the Ptolemaion, which gained importance following the destruction of the Library at Alexandria ; the library of Pantainos, around 100 CE; the library of Hadrian, in 132 CE.

§    The Library at Rhodes, a library that rivaled the Library of Alexandria.

§    The Library at Antioch, a public library of which Euphorion of Chalcis was the director near the end of the third century.

The libraries had copyist workshops, and the general organisation of books allowed for the following:

§     Conservation of an example of each text

§     Translation (the Septuagint Bible, for example)

§     Literary criticisms in order to establish reference texts for the copy (example : The Iliad and The Odyssey)

§    A catalog of books The copy itself, which allowed books to be disseminated

Book production in Rome

Book production developed in Rome in the first century BC with Latin literature that had been influenced by the Greek.

This diffusion primarily concerned circles of literary individuals. Atticus was the editor of his friend Cicero. However, the book business progressively extended itself through the Roman Empire; for example, there were bookstores in Lyon. The spread of the book was aided by the extension of the Empire, which implied the imposition of the Latin tongue on a great number of people (in Spain, Africa, etc.).

Libraries were private or created at the behest of an individual. Julius Caesar, for example, wanted to establish one in Rome, proving that libraries were signs of political prestige.

In the year 377, there were 28 libraries in Rome, and it is known that there were many smaller libraries in other cities. Despite the great distribution of books, scientists do not have a complete picture as to the literary scene in antiquity as thousands of books have been lost through time.

Paper

Papermaking has traditionally been traced to China about AD 105, when Cai Lun, an official attached to the Imperial court during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), created a sheet of paper using mulberry and other bast fibres along with fishnets, old rags, and hemp waste.

While paper used for wrapping and padding was used in China since the 2nd century BC,     paper used as a writing medium only became widespread by the 3rd century.  By the 6th century in China, sheets of paper were beginning to be used for toilet paper as well. During the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea. The Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279) that followed was the first government to issue paper currency.

Middle Ages

By the end of antiquity, between the second century and fourth century, the codex had replaced the scroll. The book was no longer a continuous roll, but a collection of sheets attached at the back. It became possible to access a precise point in the text directly. The codex is equally easy to rest on a table, which permits the reader to take notes while he or she is reading. The codex form improved with the separation of words, capital letters, and punctuation, which permitted silent reading. Tables of contents and indices facilitated direct access to information. This form was so effective that it is still the standard book form, over 1500 years after its appearance.

Paper would progressively replace parchment. Cheaper to produce, it allowed a greater diffusion of books.

Books in monasteries

A number of Christian books were destroyed at the order of Diocletian in 304 AD. During the turbulent periods of the invasions, it was the monasteries that conserved religious texts and certain works of Antiquity for the West. But there would also be important copying centers in Byzantium.

The role of monasteries in the conservation of books is not without some ambiguity:

§     Reading was an important activity in the lives of monks, which can be divided into prayer, intellectual work, and manual labor (in the Benedictine order, for example). It was therefore necessary to make copies of certain works. Accordingly, there existed scriptoria (the plural of scriptorium) in many monasteries, where monks copied and decorated manuscripts that had been preserved.

However, the conservation of books was not exclusively in order to preserve ancient culture; it was especially relevant to understanding religious

 texts with the aid of ancient knowledge. Some works were never recopied, having been judged too dangerous for the monks. Morever, in need of blank media, the monks scraped off manuscripts, thereby destroying ancient works. The transmission of knowledge was centered primarily on sacred texts

Copying and conserving books

An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works.

Despite this ambiguity, monasteries in the West and the Eastern Empire permitted the conservation of a certain number of secular texts, and several libraries were created: for example,Cassiodorus ('Vivarum' in Calabro, around 550), or Constantine I in Constantinople. There were several libraries, but the survival of books often depended on political battles and ideologies, which sometimes entailed massive destruction of books or difficulties in production (for example, the distribution of books during the Iconoclasm between 730 and 842). A long list of very old and surviving libraries that now form part of the Vatican Archives can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

The scriptorium

The scriptorium was the workroom of monk copyists; here, books were copied, decorated, rebound, and conserved. The armarius directed the work and played the role of librarian.

The role of the copyist was multifaceted: for example, thanks to their work, texts circulated from one monastery to another. Copies also allowed monks to learn texts and to perfect their religious education. The relationship with the book thus defined itself according to an intellectual relationship with God. But if these copies were sometimes made for the monks themselves, there were also copies made on demand.

The task of copying itself had several phases: the preparation of the manuscript in the form of notebooks once the work was complete, the presentation of pages, the copying itself, revision, correction of errors, decoration, and binding. The book therefore required a variety of competencies, which often made a manuscript a collective effort.

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENTS OF BOOK

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 FROM EAST ASIA

Writing on bone, shells, wood and silk existed in China by the second century BC. Paper was invented in China around the first century. The discovery of the process using the bark of the blackberry bush is attributed to Ts'ai Louen, but it may be older. Texts were reproduced by woodblock printing; the diffusion of Buddhist texts was a main impetus to large-scale production.

The format of the book evolved in China in a similar way to that in Europe, but much more slowly, and with intermediate stages of scrolls folded concertina-style, scrolls bound at one edge ("butterfly books") and so on. Printing was nearly always on one side of the paper only.

Pre-columbian codices of the Americas.

The only currently deciphered complete writing system in the Americas is the Maya script. The Maya, along with several other cultures in Mesoamerica, constructed concertina-style books written on Amati paper. Sadly, nearly all Mayan texts were destroyed by the Spanish during colonization on cultural and religious grounds. One of the few surviving examples is the Dresden Codex.

Although only the Maya have been shown to have a writing system capable of conveying any concept that can be conveyed via speech, (at about the same level as the modern Japanese writing system), other Mesoamerican cultures had more rudimentary ideographical writing systems which were contained in similar concertina-style books, one such example being the Aztec codices.

Wax tablets

Romans used wax-coated wooden tablets (pugillares) upon which they could write and erase by using astylus. One end of the stylus was pointed, and the other was spherical. Usually these tablets were used for everyday purposes (accounting, notes) and for teaching writing to children, according to the methods discussed by Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria X Chapter 3. Several of these tablets could be assembled in a form similar to a codex. Also the etymology of the word codex (block of wood) suggest that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets.

Parchment

Parchment progressively replaced papyrus. Legend attributes its invention to Eumenes II, the king of Pergamon, from which comes the name "pergamineum," which became "parchment." Its production began around the third century BC. Made using the skins of animals (sheep, cattle, donkey, antelope, etc.), parchment proved easier to conserve over time; it was more solid, and allowed one to erase text. It was a very expensive medium because of the rarity of material and the time required to produce a document.Vellum is the finest quality of parchment.

Greece and Rome

The scroll of papyrus is called "volumen" in Latin, a word which signifies "circular movement," "roll," "spiral," "whirlpool," "revolution" and finally "a roll of writing paper, a rolled manuscript, or a book."

In the 7th century Isidore of Seville explains the relation between codex, book and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13) as this: A codex is composed of many books (librorum); a book is of one scroll (voluminis). It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks (caudex) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches.

Description

The scroll is rolled around two vertical wooden axes. This design allows only sequential usage; one is obliged to read the text in the order in which it is written, and it is impossible to place a marker in order to directly access a precise point in the text. It is comparable to modern video cassettes. Moreover, the reader must use both hands to hold on to the vertical wooden rolls and therefore cannot read and write at the same time. The only volume in common usage today is the Jewish Torah.

ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF BOOKS PART 1

Writing is a system of linguistic symbols which permit one to transmit and conserve information. Writing appears to have developed between the 7th millennium BC and the 4th millennium BC, first in the form of early mnemonic symbols which became a system of ideograms or pictographs through simplification. The oldest known forms of writing were thus primarily logographic in nature. Later syllabic and alphabetic (or segmental) writing emerged.

Silk, in China, was also a base for writing. Writing was done with brushes. Many other materials were used as bases: bone, bronze, pottery, shell, etc. In India, for example, dried palm tree leaves were used; in Mesoamerica another type of plant, Amate. Any material which will hold and transmit text is a candidate for use in bookmaking.

The book is also linked to the desire of humans to create lasting records. Stones could be the most ancient form of writing, but wood would be the first medium to take the guise of a book. The words biblos and liber first meant "fibre inside of a tree". In Chinese, the character that means book is an image of a tablet of bamboo. Wooden tablets (Rongorongo) were also made on Easter Island.

Clay tablets

Clay tablets were used in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. The calamus, an instrument in the form of a triangle, was used to make characters in moist clay. The tablets were fired to dry them out. At Nineveh, 22,000 tablets were found, dating from the seventh century BC; this was the archive and library of the kings of Assyria, who had workshops of copyists and conservationists at their disposal. This presupposes a degree of organization with respect to books, consideration given to conservation, classification, etc.

Papyrus

After extracting the marrow from the stems, a series of steps (humidification, pressing, drying, gluing, and cutting), produced media of variable quality, the best being used for sacred writing. In Ancient Egypt, papyrus was used for writing maybe as early as from First Dynasty, but first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). A calamus, the stem of a reed sharpened to a point, or bird feathers were used for writing. The script of Egyptian scribes was called hieratic, or sacredotal writing; it is not hieroglyphic, but a  simplified form more adapted to manuscript writing (hieroglyphs usually being engraved or painted).

Papyrus books were in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total length of up to 10 meters or even more. Some books, such as the history of the reign of Ramses III, were over 40 meters long. Books rolled out horizontally; the text occupied one side, and was divided into columns. The title was indicated by a label attached to the cylinder containing the book. Many papyrus texts come from tombs, where prayers and sacred texts were deposited (such as the Book of the Dead, from the early 2nd millennium BC).

These examples demonstrate that the development of the book, in its material makeup and external appearance, depended on a content dictated by political (the histories of pharaohs) and religious (belief in an afterlife) values. The particular influence afforded to writing and word perhaps motivated research into ways of conserving texts           

ADVANTAGES OF READING BOOKS

1. Can change your life – Good book can change your life particularly when you apply the idea or instruction it contains. Have you ever read the book: “purpose driven Life”? This has a positive impact in my life. There are other books that can also change your life to worse. Choose your book wisely.
2. Saves money – Apart from saving money on entertainment expenses. Reading books that help you develop your skills saves money. Reading books on how someone went bankrupt will be a warning to you against repeating their mistakes. Reading a book on how to build your own backyard deck saves the expense of hiring a contractor.
3. Builds your expertise – Brian Tracy has said one way to become an expert in your chosen field is to read 100 books on the subject…
4. Improves your reasoning skills – Books for professionals contain arguments for or against the actions within. You too will be able to reason better with the knowledge you gain. Some of the arguments will rub off on you. Others you will argue against. Regardless, you’ll be reasoning better.
5. Gives you something to talk about – Have you ever run out of stuff to talk about with your best friend, wife or husband? This can be uncomfortable. It might even make married couples wonder if their marriage is in trouble. However, if you read a lot of books, you’ll always have something to talk about. You can discuss various plots in the novels you read, you can discuss the stuff you are learning in the business books you are reading as well. The possibilities of sharing are endless.
6. Books are inexpensive entertainment – Book is cheaper to buy than attending a cinema, party, or entertaining your guest.
7. You can learn at your own pace – Where formal education requires time commitments, books have no late-bells or hourly commitments. So you can learn at your own pace when you read books.
8. New mental associations – As you read more books the depth and breadth of your knowledge expands and your ability to form new associations’ increases. In reading a book to discover the solution to one problem, you find the solution to others you may not have considered.
9. Reading is an active mental process – Books make you to use your brain. By reading, you think more and become smarter.
10. It is a fundamental skill builder - Every good course on the planet has a matching book to go with it. Why? Because books help clarify difficult subjects. Books provide information that goes deeper than just classroom discussion.
11. Builds self-esteem – By reading more books, you become well informed and become an expert on the topics you read about. This expertise translates into higher self esteem.  People look to you for answers to divers’ problem. 
12. Improves memory – Many studies shows that if you don’t use your memory, you lose it. Reading requires remembering details, facts and figures and in literature, plot lines, themes and characters.
13. Improves your discipline – Actually many people fail to understand that books can help then instill discipline. Sticking to a book and wanting to get new idea is a discipline that takes the wise to develop. That is why adding book reading to your daily schedule and sticking to it, improves discipline.
14. Learn anywhere – Books are portable. You can take them almost anywhere. As such, you can learn almost anywhere too.

15. Improves creativity – by reading more books and exposing yourself to new and more complete information, you will also be able to come up with more creative ideas

16. Improves your vocabulary – Remember in elementary school when you learned how to know the meaning of one word by reading the context of the other words in the sentence? You get the same benefit from book reading. While reading books, especially challenging ones, you will find yourself exposed to many new words you wouldn’t be otherwise.
17. Gives you a glimpse into other cultures and places – What is your favorite vacation spot? I would bet you read a lot about that destination. Books can expand your horizons by letting you see what other cities and countries have to offer before you visit them.
18. Improves concentration and focus – Reading requires you to focus on what you are reading for long periods. Unlike magazines, Internet posts or e-Mails that might contain small chunks of information. Books tell the whole story. Since you must concentrate in order to read, like a muscle, you will get better at concentration.

FAMOUS QUOTE ABOUT BOOK

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Francis Bacon
 Study and learn, and become acquainted with all good books, and with languages, tongues, and people. : Doctrine & Covenants
Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread. : François Mauriac
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit.
Amos Bronson Alcott
The best of my education has come from the public library... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don't need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library.
Lesley Conger

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.
Theodore Parker
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. Mark Twain
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. E.M. Forster
The proper study of mankind is books. : Aldous Huxley
Every man's memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley
: Goethe once said of someone, "He is a dull man. If he were a book, I would not read him." James Bryce:
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Mark Twain
:How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.Henry David Thoreau
I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx
Good books, if read and acted upon takes man from where he is to where he ought to be. Dr. Lere Paul Adiatu