Codex, Pinax and Writing Slat

Abstract

A codex is, in its construction, a book: the component leaves are placed one on the other, folded down the middle, and joined along the fold so that the reader can open the "book" to whatever leaf he wishes.With slight improvementssuch as folding the leaves more than once and cutting the folded edges to get separated, even-sized pages, such as joining several groups of leaves, the one under the other, along the one central axis -the codex eventually supplanted the written roll almost entirely, and its basic design has dominated book production down to our own time.It was the most important innovation in scribal and literary media until the invention of printing.Unlike other innovations, however, it did not appear on the scene suddenly, nor did it achieve its predominance at one stroke, but gradually, over a long period of time during which design and production were steadily advanced and improved.The codex has its origin in the wax-coated tablets, mostly wooden, that served for ephemeral writing in ancient Greece, in biblical Israel, and over all the ancient Near East.Doubtless, in a number of places the notion arose occasionally of joining several tablets together, but only in Rome and Greece did such assemblages become known as durable articles.The Roman method was either to clasp or lace the tablets together along one edge, thus forming a common axis that enabled the reader to leaf to and fro through the tablet-pages.As the Romans wrote from left to right, the tablets were joined on their left side, the user would hold them with the joined side in his left hand, turning them or

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