the.com/parchment
animal skin scraped thin enough to outlive every empire that wrote on it
means A writing surface made from treated animal skin, or by extension a stiff, aged-looking paper made to resemble it.
from From Old French parchemin, which came through Latin from pergamena, 'paper of Pergamon' — the ancient city in Asia Minor famous for producing this writing material. The popular tale says Pergamon perfected skin-based writing surfaces when a rival cut off its papyrus supply; whether or not that drama is true, the city genuinely gave its name to the stuff. A later folk reshaping confused pergamena with the unrelated 'Parthian,' nudging the spelling toward 'parch-.'
- made from
- stretched, scraped calf, sheep, or goat skin
- lifespan
- survives thousands of years if kept dry
- vellum
- finest grade, made from unborn calves
- recycled
- scraped clean and reused, hiding erased texts
- dead sea scrolls
- written on parchment over two millennia ago
dead sea scrolls — ancient hebrew manuscripts on parchment found in qumran caves, dating to 200 bce - 70 ce
declaration of independence — written on parchment made from sheepskin, signed july 4 1776
magna carta — sealed on parchment at runnymede england, june 15 1215