Ancient World Review

Johannes Gutenberg And The Printing Press

Johannes Gutenberg (1400 - 1468 AD) is famous for his invention of the printing press, the most revolutionary technological development in the history of the world. As it turns out, though, Gutenberg's press wasn't actually the first. The Chinese beat him to it by several centuries:

"The world's first movable type printing press technology for printing paper books was made of ceramic porcelain china materials and invented in ancient China around A.D 1040 by the Han Chinese innovator Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). In 1377, currently the oldest extant movable metal print book, Jikji, was printed in Korea. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was, however, limited. They were expensive, and required a high amount of labor involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets or metal tablets, required for scripts based on the ancient Chinese writing script, which has thousands of characters." Source: Wikipedia.

Gutenberg's innovations were a major step forward, however. It also helped that European languages didn't include as many characters as found in the Chinese script.

Gutenberg is best known, perhaps, for printing the Gutenberg Bible, a Vulgate Latin edition "valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its historic significance." (Wikipedia) But he also produced other, more commercial books and texts in his workshop, the first publishing house in the West, so to speak.

"Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Hof Humbrecht, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this he borrowed another 800 guilders from [Johann Fust, a moneylender who had financed some of Gutenberg's earlier projects], and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there may have been two presses, one for the pedestrian texts, and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455." (Wikipedia)

Comment: I've always loved old books. They're beautiful, for one thing, and they were made to last, unlike today's throwaway books which are mass-produced in quantities that Gutenberg could never have dreamed of. And old books have an atmosphere about them that's hard to describe. I've probably been influenced too much by H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and movies like The Ninth Gate, but these books always look like they contain ancient, secret and possibly dangerous information.

Related: The Machine That Made Us (Gutenberg Printing Press Documentary)

How Gutenberg Made Moveable Type

The Ancient Art Of Parchment Making

Note: The use of parchment apparently dates all the way back to the time of Herodotus (5th cent BC) when books were called "skins" in some parts of Greece. Papyrus was a lot more common, though. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. rev., "[i]n the production of books parchment played only a minor role compared with papyrus, which remained the dominant writing material throughout Greek and Roman antiquity."

IntroductionTo English & Latin Paleography

"Palaeography can be an essential skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of a single alphabet in each given language has evolved constantly, it is necessary to know how to decipher its individual characters as they existed in various eras. Second, scribes often used many abbreviations, usually so as to write more quickly and sometimes to save space, so the specialist-palaeographer must know how to interpret them. Knowledge of individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbreviations enables the palaeographer to read and understand the text." (Wikipedia)

Paleography isn't very reliable when it comes to dating manuscripts. According to Wikipedia, "Palaeography can be used to provide information about the date at which a document was written. However, 'paleography is a last resort for dating' and, 'for book hands, a period of 50 years is the least acceptable spread of time' with it being suggested that the 'rule of thumb' should probably be to avoid dating a hand more precisely than a range of at least seventy or eighty years."

The margin of error here can be a significant issue when it comes to certain documents. For example, if an ancient New Testament manuscript is dated using paleographic techniques only it would be hard to say with any certainty if it was written in the first or second century AD. This would make a huge amount of difference, for instance, if you're trying to argue that a particular gospel was composed by one of the original apostles. You'd need something more solid to support your case, some kind of internal evidence such as the name of a city known from other sources to have been founded at a certain date or the name of a historical person known to have been born in a certain year.

Script changes can be used to assign manuscripts to certain periods, however, as seen in the following video.

One of the problems paleographers face is the fact that some of these old manuscripts have to be read letter by letter:

"When reading modern text, we generally identify whole words at a glance. Look at this sentence:

"The huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. The oredr of the ltteers in the wrod can be in a total mses but you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm.

"While this way of reading and comprehending whole words at a glance is very useful in the modern world, it can lead to incomprehension and mistakes when trying to read documents written in an old and unfamiliar style of handwriting." Source: Paleography: Where to Start," the National Archives.

The rest of this three-part series can be found here.

Paleography is a huge discipline that covers the entire history of writing all around the world. The area of Latin writing alone is a gigantic subject. This is a fascinating field if you're into old books and cursive writing like I am. H.P. Lovecraft, one of my favorite writers, had a similar fascination. He could be called an amateur paleographer in a sense. For example, he must have made an extensive study of colonial-period American English because he reproduced it down to its typographical peculiarities in several letters in his great novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. As a side note, in case you're interested in this kind of thing, Lovecraft in that novella also used a Latin chant that he quoted from Transcendental Magic, a book by the French occultist Eliphas Levi (1810-1875). I'm a bookish nerd, I guess, because I find this stuff interesting.

The Quill Pen

"It is not known when the first quills appeared, but it is known that some parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with quill in 2nd century BC. St. Isidore of Seville mentions them in the 7th century in his writings, and it is believed that quills then began to spread as a popular method of writing as better than reed pens. With quills, it was easy to write on parchment and vellum. They were also used with fine brushes to illustrate manuscripts with figures, decorations, and images and become more and more popular from the 15th century on, when writing and flourished writing started to spread through the western world." Source: History of Pencils.

This is calligraphy, which is closer to drawing than actual writing.

"What does the quill pen have that the reed pen doesn’t? For starters, the quill is as light as a feather (Literally). The aerodynamics that the feather provides helps with the swiftness that occurs when you write. The quill is definitely thinner than the reed pen and therefore, easier to handle. The quill and reed pen both share the ability to store ink due to capillarity but the quill is more versatile in writing miniscule scripts and perfecting strokes. There may be a correlation between the size/appearance of the scripts during this period and the switch to the quill." Source: Dartmouth Ancient Books Lab.

Note: Feathered quill pens are apparently just a Hollywood invention.

Comment: Quill pens may seem primitive, but the writers who used them could be very productive despite the fact that the pens had to be re-inked constantly and wore out quickly. Just to take one relatively modern example, Charles Dickens used quill pens to write "well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books." (Wikipedia) He was just as productive, if not more so, than writers working with word processors today, so it's obvious that your productivity as a writer has nothing to do with the tools you use.

Video from 2012. Closed-captions helpful.

How To Make Early Medieval Ink

Note: "Iron gall ink (also known as common ink, oak gall ink or iron gall nut ink) is a purple-black or brown-black ink made from iron salts and tannic acids from vegetable sources. It was the standard ink formulation used in Europe for the fourteen-hundred year period between the 5th and 19th centuries, remained in widespread use well into the 20th century, and is still sold today. " Source: Wikipedia.

Related: New Research on Iron Gall Ink (2013). (A two-and-a-half hour scientific assessment of IGI and ways of preserving manuscripts written with this ink)

"There are a fair number of medieval recipes for making ink. There were two completely different types of ink. The first is carbon ink, made of charcoal or lamp-black mixed with a gum. The second is metal-gall ink, usually iron gall, made by mixing a solution of tannic acids [found in bark, leaves, oak galls, etc] with ferrous sulphate (copperas) [1]; it too requires added gum, but as a thickener rather than as an adhesive. The blackness is the result of a chemical reaction. Both types of ink were employed in medieval manuscripts." Source: Medieval Manuscript Manual, Central European University, Budapest.

[1] "Ferrous sulfate was used in the manufacture of inks, most notably iron gall ink, which was used from the middle ages until the end of the eighteenth century. Chemical tests made on the Lachish letters (c.588–586 BCE) showed the possible presence of iron. It is thought that oak galls and copperas may have been used in making the ink on those letters." (Wikipedia)

The Lachish Letters. Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca (pieces of pottery).

Oldest Pre-Human Footprints Discovered In Crete

"The oldest known footprints of pre-humans were found on the Mediterranean island of Crete and are at least six million years old, says an international team of researchers from Germany, Sweden, Greece, Egypt and England, led by Tübingen scientists Uwe Kirscher and Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. Their study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports." Source: Phys.org.

"The footprints from fossilized beach sediments were found near the west Cretan village of Trachilos and published in 2017. Using geophysical and micropaleontological methods, researchers have now dated them to 6.05 million years before the present day, making them the oldest direct evidence of a human-like foot used for walking."

Video from 2019.

Note: Many commentators believe that these footprints directly challenge the currently accepted Out of Africa Theory, but the situation seems to be more complex than that. Six million years ago, Crete was connected to mainland Greece and "the European and Near East mainland were separated from humid East Africa by a relatively brief expansion of the Sahara." A desertification process in Mesopotamia around that time "could have initiated a migration of European mammals, possibly including apes, to Africa. On the other hand, the second-phase sealing off of the continents by the Sahara 6 million years ago could have enabled a separate development of the African pre-human Orrorin tugenensis in parallel with a European pre-human" tentatively identified as Graecopithecus freybergi by the researchers.

If I understand this correctly, it suggests that two different groups of humans may have evolved in parallel in Africa and Europe. In other words, we could be looking at a dramatic example of convergent evolution. The implications of this are kind of mind-boggling, to say the least. How true it is remains to be seen.

Related: Cancel Culture In Science: What The Trachilos Footprints Revealed About The Peer Review Process

Answer To What Makes Us Human May Lie In Our "Junk DNA"

Video from 2018.

"Our DNA is very similar to that of the chimpanzee, which in evolutionary terms is our closest living relative. Stem cell researchers have now found a previously overlooked part of our DNA, so-called non-coded DNA, that appears to contribute to a difference which, despite all our similarities, may explain why our brains work differently." Source: Science Daily.

Human Head Carvings & Phalluses Discovered At 11,000-Yr-Old Site In Turkey

"Archaeologists in Turkey have found evidence that an 11,000-year-old prehistoric site was used for a ceremonial parade through a building containing phallus-shaped pillars and a carving of a human head." Source: Live Science.

"Called Karahantepe, the site is located in southern Turkey, east of Şanlıurfa, and has a series of buildings that date back to long before writing was invented. Within the remains of the buildings, archaeologists found carvings of human heads, snakes and a fox, as well as several interestingly shaped pillars.

"For instance, the archaeologists discovered 11 pillars near a carving of a human head. 'All pillars are erected and shaped like a phallus,' Necmi Karul, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Istanbul University, wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi."

Related: The Neolithic Settlements Around Gobekli Tepe.

26,000-Year-Old Site In Turkey Older Than Gobekli Tepe

"Boncuklu Tarla is an archaeological site in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the remains of a settlement occupied from the Late Epipalaeolithic to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B periods. It was discovered in 2008 during an archaeological survey in advance of the construction of the Ilısu Dam and has been excavated by a team from Mardin Museum since 2012." (Wikipedia)

^"The discovery of a large communal building with stone pillars was reported at Boncuklu Tarla in 2019, prompting comparisons to Göbekli Tepe. The excavators also claimed to have found a sewer system, which if confirmed would be the oldest known in the world."

According to Hurriyet Daily, which reported the discovery back in 2019, "The Neolithic-era temple with four stelas was unearthed in Dargeçit district of Mardin, which has been home to 25 civilizations throughout history, including the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, Urartu, Rome, Abbasid, Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations."

The Screaming Mummy & The Murder Of Ramesses III

Ramesses III, the second pharaoh (1186 - 1155 BC?)  of the Twentieth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, was "the last great monarch of the New Kingdom to wield any substantial authority over Egypt." (Wikipedia) "His long reign saw the decline of Egyptian political and economic power, linked to a series of invasions and internal economic problems that also plagued pharaohs before him." This turmoil may have led to his assassination, but I'm just guessing about that. It's also possible that his murder was just another one of the intrafamilial power grabs so common in ancient monarchies.

According to official trial transcripts, the pharaoh was killed in the so-called Harem Conspiracy "led by his wife, Tiye and her eldest son Pentawere." The conspirators attacked Ramesses while he was visiting his royal harem (for whatever reason -- there's lots of room for lurid speculation here). It sounds like they used the noise and chaos surrounding an annual festival called the Beautiful Festival of the Valley to provide cover for the murder. Judging by the condition of the mummy, they slashed his throat down to the vertebrate in a killing that would have done Jack the Ripper proud.

The murder was carried out in order to put Ramesses' son, Pentawere, on the throne, but the conspiracy failed in that respect:

"It is possible that other members of the royal family loyal to the future Ramesses IV [the pharaoh's second son] reacted quickly to outmaneuvre the conspirators. Ramesses IV selected twelve magistrates to investigate and judge the case across five trials. In addition to the chief conspirators named above, those who had knowledge of the conspiracy but did not report it were arrested, tried, and punished. Twenty-eight people were executed."

No one knows what happened to Ramesses III's wife, Tiye, the ringleader of the conspiracy. According to Egypt Today (2020), "The same royal cache in Deir el-Bahari [next video] contained a mummy of a woman showing signs of terror, pain and screaming on her face, known as the 'Screaming Woman Mummy'. Her head is tilted to the right side, and her legs are bent and wrapped at the ankle, while the other mummies are closed-mouthed and placed in a straight position."  This mummy, however, apparently belonged to an older woman who died of a heart attack. It was carefully mummified in the traditional way, so it probably isn't Tiye. As far as I can tell, her fate is still a mystery.

As for Pentawere, it appears that he was either hanged or strangled to death or forced to commit suicide and hanged himself. His corpse was unceremoniously embalmed and buried, surviving to this day as Unknown Man E aka the Screaming Mummy. That assumes, of course, that Unknown Man E has been correctly identified.

As usual with these reconstructions, details like skin tone, hair style, jewelry, etc. are purely speculative.