Egypt

I The History of Ink

Although the origin of writing is in Mesopotamia, where a system based wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets was developed (cuneiform writing), the oldest ink-written texts are Egyptian. The earliest known examples of hieroglyphic characters drawn on clay were discovered at Umm el-Qaab, in Abydos (circa 3200 B.C.E.). They predate the earliest surviving evidence of manufactured papyrus, whose earliest preserved example is blank. It is a scroll that was buried as part of the burial gifts of Hemaka, an official during the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Den (First Dynasty, circa 3100 B.C.E.), with the expectation that it would be utilized in the afterlife.

Until the 3rd/2nd century B.C.E., the Egyptians wrote on papyrus, a vegetable writing medium made from the leaves of the papyrus plant. The scribes placed the papyrus sheets or scrolls on their thighs, as shown by the preserved statuettes of professional scribes, and drew the texts on them. The scribes employed vegetable brushes crafted from crushed or chewed reeds (in this way the fibres of the tip were separated, and a fine brush was obtained). In keeping with the writing tool, the ink was in the form of solid tablets, which, like modern watercolours, were moistened for writing and stored in small cases called «palettes». Egyptian papyri show that the ink used for writing was generally black, but we have found palettes containing up to six colours.

The tools used for writing changed from the Ptolemaic period onwards; with the arrival and settlement of the Greek population, the Egyptians gradually abandoned the brush and ink tablets in favour of new means of writing.