Note 5 — Early Typography. CHAPTER I.

A reference can scarcely be avoided, in connection with this subject, to the exclamation of the patriarch Job (ch. xix. 23, 24), “Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen, and lead, in the rock for ever!” The book of Job is commonly supposed to have been written either by Moses, when residing amongst the Midianites about 1520 years before the commencement of the Christian era, or by Elihu, one of the speakers in the book, which would probably carry its antiquity a century and a half or two centuries further back. The word translated ‘printed’ does not, however, bear the meaning in the original, which is now generally attached to it. It evidently refers to the method of inscribing records on rolls, made of the skins of animals, for the purpose of preserving them for the benefit of future generations, or on such other substances as were then used for that purpose; and in the texts quoted the modes of writing and the instruments for inscribing are expressly referred to. Plates of metal, and prepared leaves of the talipot palm, are to this day engraved and inscribed on, in Eastern countries, with iron ‘styles,’ for purposes of record. Books of the laws of Buddha exist on plates of gold, as well as on the more common olas; and although we do not know upon what material Moses transcribed the Law, which God himself commanded him to write, and to place in the side of the Ark of the Covenant, we may be certain that it would be written on the most imperishable, as well as the most portable of substances adapted for such a purpose, Moses being learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and having for his assistants the most skilful artisans of the age. The Ten Commandments we know were graven on tablets of stone hewn out of the rock. From tablets such as these, and from engraved plates, as well as from inscribed olas, copies and fac-similes might have been easily made by a process analogous to that of copper-plate printing; the only drawback being that in all such copies the printed characters would have been reversed. That the Hebrews must have been familiar with books, such as were referred to by Job, is clear. In Egypt, during the time of their residence in that country, Public Libraries existed:—“Over the mouldering door which led to the bibliothetical repository of the Memnonium, said to have been built about the time of Moses, Champollion read, written over the heads of Thoth and Safkh, (who were the male and female deities of arts, sciences, and literature), the remarkably appropriate titles of ‘President of the Library,’ and ‘Lady of Letters.’” (Kitto’s Cycl. of Bibl. Literature, Art. Writing). The Egyptians probably derived their knowledge of writing from Misraim the son of Ham, as did the Canaanites from Canaan the brother of Misraim, from whom they were descended. There is proof in the sculptured pictures and inscriptions in the oldest Egyptian monuments, of about the same age as the Great Pyramid, that 2200 years B. C., writing was an art well known at that early period. “Whatever the employment, or whatever the produce being brought to be laid at the prince’s feet, there were always scribes in attendance to take down the exact amount in writing on the property rolls.” (Vide Life and Work at the Great Pyramid in 1865, by C. Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal, Scotland; and article in Good Words, Part VII, 1867, by the same author, p. 453.) When the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, among other great and walled cities which they captured was Debir, whose original name was Kirjath-sepher, or the City of Books, or Kirjath-sannah, the City of Letters, (Joshua xv. 49; Judges i. 11). This word “sannah” is evidently the same as “sannas,” the name given to oblong copper-plates, on which are engraved the record of the grants of lands, &c., made from very ancient times by the kings of Ceylon, to temples, chiefs, and others; and which are frequently, under that name, received in evidence in the law courts in disputes regarding landed property. They are, in fact, the title-deeds under which most of the Sin̥halese gentry of ancient family hold their estates. These royal grants are sometimes on plates of silver, and occasionally cut in the solid rock or on massive stone tablets.