#739 What is a codex?

What is a codex? A codex is a collection of ancient manuscripts in book form. The term originally just meant a book, but today we use it only to refer to books of ancient manuscripts. The word codex comes from the Latin “caudex”, which means “block of wood” or “book”.

The codex marks the point where people stopped using scrolls and started writing on single sheets of paper, or other material. When people first started writing, they wrote on clay. Writing appeared first in Mesopotamia and they had an abundance of clay. They could write on it with a stylus, probably a cut reed, and then either bake it or use it again. Other civilizations carved their letters into stone, bone, wood, or wax. Letters had to be very straight because it is not easy to carve a curved letter. These tablets could then be stored for later use.

The problem with solid tablets is that they are not very easy to carry around and they take up a lot of space when they are stored. Papyrus solved this problem. It was first used in 3000 BC and was made by slicing the papyrus plant into strips and then layering them. Once it was pounded flat, the papyrus could be written on with ink. It was a useful tool for writing because it could be folded or rolled and stored easily. Many documents were written on long papyrus scrolls. However, it easily rotted, and it deteriorated with age. Also, the papyrus plant was not easy to get. Papyrus is only native to Egypt, which hampered its spread around the world.

Other materials were used for writing, but parchment became very popular. It was stronger and more durable than papyrus. It didn’t deteriorate with age, and it didn’t have the fibers that papyrus had, making it easier and smoother to write on. Parchment was made from the untanned skins of sheep, calves, and goats. That meant it could be produced in any country on Earth and its ease of production made it more available than papyrus. The main form of writing was still in scrolls, though. Several sheets of parchment would be glued together to make a long scroll and they could be as long as 10 meters. Scrolls were easier to store than stone or wax tablets, but they were not very easy to read. Unrolling a scroll and finding a certain place was not an easy task. The Romans came up with a solution.

The Romans took sheets of parchment and folded them into a notebook shape. This made it much easier to carry. Then they took it a step further. In the early days of Rome, people wrote on wooden tablets that were covered in wax. They were bound in the middle so that they could be closed like a book, with the wooden side protecting the wax side. Romans started to fold papyrus or parchment sheets and keep them inside wooden covers. They were easier to carry than scrolls, easier to store, and it was easier to find any part of the document. It was also possible to write on both sides of the paper, something that didn’t happen with scrolls.

This collection of parts of a scroll inside a wooden cover was a codex. Codex meant block of wood because the documents were encased inside a block of wood. Codices were used throughout the Roman Empire, but it was Christianity that really helped put them on the map. In the early days of Christianity, followers wanted to spread the word of Jesus. They had collected all of his teachings into a Bible, and they wanted to spread it far and wide. The teachings were far too long to fit onto a scroll, and it was imperative that the teachers would be able to dip in and out of the Bible to teach different parts. That meant a codex was the only solution. You could fit many times more in a codex than you could on a scroll. The covers also served to protect the documents, helping them to last longer than a scroll. As Christianity grew, and an industry of copying the Bibles also grew, more and more codices were produced. Parchment slowly gave way to the new paper that had been invented. Paper was cheaper and the number of codices produced grew again. After the invention of the printing press, it became cheaper to produce books as a whole and the idea of a codex started to fade. Documents were no longer bound up between wooden boards. Book covers were still pretty hefty, to protect the pages, but that changed with time as well. A hardback book is probably the closest we have to a codex these days. And that is what I learned today.

Image By Kungl. biblioteket, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=216504

Sources

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=11

https://www.britannica.com/topic/codex-manuscript