Parchment was developed in the city of Pergamum. Perhaps, the word “parchment” evolved from this name in about 263–241 BC. In the 2nd century BC a great library was set up in Pergamum that rivalled the famous Library of Alexandria. Writing on prepared animal skins had a long history. The earliest of such documents are: a fragmentary roll of leather of the Sixth Dynasty preserved in the Cairo Museum; a roll of the Twelfth Dynasty now in Berlin; the mathematical text now in the British Museum; and a document of the reign of Ramses II. Early Islamic texts are also found on parchment. One sort of parchment was called vellum. This word was used to mean fine parchment. This parchment was made from calfskin.

There was a short period during the introduction of printing where parchment and paper were used interchangeably: although most copies of the Gutenberg Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment. In the later Middle Ages, parchment was largely replaced by paper. Paper was much cheaper and more abundant than parchment. Parchment is also extremely affected by its environment and changes in humidity, which can cause buckling. Books with parchment pages were bound with strong wooden boards and clamped tightly shut by metal clasps or leather straps.

After being flayed, the skin is soaked in water for about one day. This removes blood and grime from the skin and prepares it for dehairing liquor. The dehairing liquor was originally made of fermented or vegetable matter, like beer. By the Middle Ages an unhairing bath included lime. The liquor bath was in wooden or stone vats. Sometimes the skins stayed in the unhairing bath for eight or more days depending how concentrated and how warm the solution was. Replacing the lime water bath also sped the process up.

After soaking in water the skins were placed on a stretching frame. The skins could be attached by wrapping small, smooth rocks in the skins with rope or leather strips. Both sides were left open to the air so they could be scraped with a sharp, semi-lunar knife to remove the last of the hair and get the skin to the right thickness. The skins were made almost entirely of collagen. They formed natural glue while drying and if you take off the frame they keep their form.

To make the parchment more aesthetically pleasing or more suitable for the scribes, special treatments were used. For example, parchment makers rubbed pumice powder into the flesh side of parchment while it was still wet on the frame. It was used to make it smooth and to modify the surface to enable inks to penetrate more deeply. Powders and pastes of calcium compounds were also used to help remove grease so the ink would not run. To make the parchment smooth and white, thin pastes of lime, flour, egg whites and milk were rubbed into the skins.

During the seventh through the ninth centuries, many earlier parchment manuscripts were scrubbed and scoured to be ready for rewriting, and often the earlier writing can still be read. These recycled parchments are called palimpsests. In some universities the word parchment is still used to refer to the certificate presented at graduation ceremonies, even though the modern document is printed on paper or thin card.

2. Answer the following questions:

1) What is parchment made from?