SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



It is probable that, originally, each book occupied a 

 single papyrus, or parchment, roll, and that the division 

 into books was originally suggested for mechanical 

 convenience to avoid too large a roll. A single work 

 what we should call a single volume thus consisted, 

 ordinarily, of several parchment, or papyrus, rolls. 



TEKRA-COTTA BOOKS OF THE BABYLONIANS AND 

 ASSYRIANS 



Since the papyrus roll was so convenient and so ex- 

 tensively used, there can be little doubt that it made 

 its way, at one time or another, to Mesopotamia, the 

 home of the Babylonians and Assyrians, who were so 

 long the greatest rivals of the Egyptians. This sup- 

 position is more than an inference, for the sculptures of 

 the Assyrians show their scribes making records upon 

 what appear to be scrolls of some flexible material. It 

 seems tolerably certain that no traces of books of this 

 character have been preserved in Mesopotamia, the 

 explanation being that the climatic conditions are very 

 different there from those existing in Egypt. Even 

 had the Babylonians used papyrus habitually, it is 

 highly improbable that a single scrap of this material 

 would have been preserved to the present time. The 

 fact that no books of the classical period have been pre- 

 served in Greece or in Italy, with the single exception 

 of a library in the buried city of Herculaneum, gives 

 full explanation of the absence of papyrus books from 

 the Babylonian tumuli. 



But, on the other hand, it is highly probable that the 

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