“The part of Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the ‘city’ was invented. It was here that we learned how to write.”
Writing was first on pieces of clay, then on papyrus reeds from the Nile Delta. The reeds, which grew 16 feet tall, had their outer rind removed, leaving the sticky inner cores, which were cut into strips, interwoven together, soaked, pressed, and then dried.
The word “paper” comes from the word “papyrus.” It was the main medium to write upon for nearly 3,000 years.
Writing was invented in China around 2,600 BC during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor. Instead of using reeds, the Chinese used bamboo, which was cut into strips and written upon vertically. These strips were tied together creating bamboo annals or books.
Writing was also upon palm leaves, bark, bones, and stone in other parts of the world. Writing was then made on parchment made from the skins of sheep and goats, and on vellum made from calfskin.
Reading and writing was, for the most part, limited to the ruling elite. It was the communication of the deep state class who wanted to control the ignorant and uneducated masses.
Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1908-2008) wrote: “Ancient writing’s main function was to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.”
Emphasizing how tyrants need the masses of people to be ignorant, George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.”
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, in its section on Egyptian Artifacts, has a display on “Scribes,” stating: “Only a small percentage of ancient Egypt’s population was literate, namel
Particularly popular and lucrative, the scribe’s profession was mostly hereditary. Scribes had careers in the government, priesthood, and army. They began their rigorous training in their early childhood. Most of their training took place inside a building called the “House of Life,” attached to the temple. Scribes wrote on stone or clay sherds.”
Also in other countries, elite ruling classes always kept common people and slaves uninformed, prohibiting them from being educated or from communicating.
Thomas Aquinas wrote of Mohammed in Summa contra Gentiles, 1258: “It was a shrewd decision on Mohammed’s part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity.”
Ancient Israel was the first nation where the general population was literate. In the 4th century A.D., Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea quoted the Jewish historian Eupolemus, who wrote circa 150 B.C.: “Moses was the first wise man. He taught the alphabet to the Jews who passed it on to the Phoenicians, who passed it to the Greeks. Moses first wrote laws for the Jews.” (Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:26.1)
Levites taught the people the law, and taught them how to read the law. Israel functioned as a Hebrew republic for four hundred years before they sinned by asking for a king.
The democracy of ancient Athens and the republic of ancient Rome also required citizens to be educated and informed. Thomas Sowell wrote in Degeneration of Democracy, 6/2010: “A democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.”
In The Lessons of History (Simon & Schuster, 1968, p. 77), Will and Ariel Durant wrote: “Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence. Ignorance lends itself to manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion.”
James Madison wrote to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822: “A people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
On controlling education, George Orwell commented in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened – that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’. And when memory failed and written records were falsified – when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standards against which it could be tested.”
Orwell added: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
This is similar to the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, who conquered many kingdoms to unify China in 221 BC. When he was criticized for not ruling as rulers had in the past, he ordered all of the hand-written records of the past to be burned and the scholars buried.
The ‘Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin‘ reported that Qin’s Chancellor, Li Si, told the Emperor in 213 BC:” I, your servant, propose that all historians’ records other than those of Qin’s be burned. If anyone under heaven has copies of the Classics of History (Shu Jing) they shall deliver them to the governor for burning.
Anyone who dares to discuss the Classics of History shall be publicly executed. Anyone who uses history to criticize the
(So, we have discussed the history of paper and writing. Now let’s look at what happened with the invention of printing and the printing press:)
The Qin Dynasty was overthrown, and in 202 BC the Han Dynasty ruled China. In the following centuries, Chinese scribes developed the process of making paper from tree pulp and rags.
Beginning in 175 AD, during the Han Dynasty, scribes placed paper over stone engravings of texts of Confucius and made rubbings with charcoal. This developed into laying paper over raised stone letters covered with ink, a technique which spread to other countries like Japan, where a Nara Empress printed a Buddhist charm in 768 AD. Using a method with carved wooden or baked clay blocks, China, during the Tang Dynasty, created what could be considered the first “printed” book in 868 AD.
In 1234, Korea’s Goryeo Dynasty invented the first “metal” movable type printing press. In 1443, Korean Emperor Sejong the Great introduced a 24-letter han’gul alphabet which made printing practical.
Whereas China used pictogram characters, and Egypt used hie
Then in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press – the Western world’s first “metal moveable type” printing press.
On August 24, 1455, Gutenberg printed his masterpiece, the Gutenberg Bible, regarded as the first book of significance ever printed. No longer copied tediously by the hands of scribes, Bibles were soon mass produced.
Gutenberg wrote about his 42-line Gutenberg Bible, also called the Mazarin Bible, 1455: “God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word can not reach. Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books which confine instead of spread the public treasure. Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine.”
Gutenberg continued: “Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men. Through it, God will spread His word; a spring of pure truth shall flow from it; like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light hithertofore unknown to shine among men.”
