ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Parchment Production in the First Millennium BCat Seglamen, Northern Ethiopia

Laurel Phillipson

Published online: 15 August 2013# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract Traditional Ethiopian and European processes of parchment manufactureand their associated tools are described and compared with artefacts recovered froman important pre-Aksumite site at Seglamen, in the highlands of northern Ethiopia.Many close similarities of tools used at Seglamen in both the earlier and later phasesof the pre-Aksumite, from about 800 BC, to implements used by present-dayEthiopian scribes attest to the systematic production of parchment at Seglamen andto cultural continuity over a period of almost three millennia.

Résumé Les processus traditionnels éthiopiens et européens de fabrication duparchemin, et les outils qui leurs sont liés, sont décrits et comparés aux objetsretrouvés sur un site pré-Aksumite à Seglamen, dans les régions montagneuses dunord de l’Ethiopie. Un grand nombre de similarités entre les outils utilisés à Seglamenpendant l’époque pré-Aksumite, à partir du huitième siècle av. J-C, et ceux utilisés denos jours par les scribes éthiopiens, atteste de la production systématique duparchemin à Seglamen et d’une continuité culturelle pendant près de trois millénaires.

Keywords Pre-Aksumite .Parchment .Manuscript production .Lithic tools .Ethiopianarchaeology . Seglamen

Introduction

Evidence that parchment was produced in northern Ethiopia at pre-AksumiteSeglamen from about 800 BC adds to the limited number of worldwide locationswhere this culturally significant craft is known to have been practised from an earlydate, and extends its range well beyond previously known areas. The recovery ofmultiple examples of the tools used in parchment preparation implies the presence ofadministrative or religious scribes in mid-first millennium BC highland northernEthiopia, as part of a richly varied and complex culture. It also shows a remarkablecontinuity in the tools and processes used from pre-Aksumite Seglamen to the

Afr Archaeol Rev (2013) 30:285–303DOI 10.1007/s10437-013-9139-y

L. Phillipson (*)Threshfield, North Yorkshire, UKe-mail: dw.l.phillipson@btinternet.com

present-day craft of Ethiopia’s traditional scribes. It need not be considered unusual thatEthiopian parchment manufacture shows a close continuity of tools and processes over aperiod of more than two and a half millennia; similar continuity has been demonstratedbetween some aspects of pre-Aksumite and recent architecture (D.W. Phillipson 2009b).Pre-Aksumite culinary, ceramic and lithic tool traditions are equally allied both to thoseof previous indigenous inhabitants of northern Ethiopia and to those of their Aksumitesuccessors (L. Phillipson 2000, 2009, 2012, 2013).

While the oldest securely dated Ethiopian manuscripts are attributed to lateAksumite scribes of the sixth and seventh centuries AD (D.W. Phillipson 2009b,2012: figs. 29, 30), the inception of literacy in the northern Horn of Africa was muchearlier. It is to pre-Aksumite archaeology of the first millennium BC that attentionmust be directed in search of the oldest, necessarily indirect, evidence of Ethiopianmanuscript production. Formal and informal pre-Aksumite stone inscriptions, almostall in an Ethio-Sabeic language that is allied to but not identical with Sabean, havebeen recovered from well-dispersed sites in the northern highlands of Ethiopia,including Seglamen, Hawlti and Abba Pantelewon located near Aksum, and fromother sites located further to the east, including the Great Temple at Yeha (Drewes1962; Bernand et al. 1991; Michels 2005; Wolf and Nowotnick 2010a, 2010b; D.W.Phillipson 2012). Although literacy was probably far from universal, the existence ofnumerous inscriptions implies the presence of sufficient readers to make the exerciseof writing worthwhile. That pre-Aksumite writing would have been restricted to theslow and painstaking work of stone-carved temple adornment, regal or familialcommemoration and laboriously incised graffiti is implausible. Readier and moreportable means of written communication would have existed contemporaneouslywith the monuments: for instructing the stone carvers, for administration and recordkeeping, perhaps for the transmission of historical or sacred texts and for training newgenerations of scribes. Even if it was confined to a small segment of the population,some degree of literacy is attested for most of the major pre-Aksumite settlements andreligious centres, and where there were writers and readers there must have beenwriting materials. In keeping with present-day and recent Ethiopian traditions, the useof parchment—cleaned, stretched hides or pelts—as a foundation for manuscripts isplausible. In this paper we consider what evidence of parchment production may berecognised in the archaeological record at Seglamen, an important pre-Aksumiteresidential, industrial and probably religious site in western Tigray. The site isdescribed below.

Although systematic archaeological investigation of Seglamen and its hinterland isfar from complete, it has progressed far enough that we can be confident that neitherpotsherds nor clay tablets were commonly used as writing surfaces. There is a corpusof ancient sherds with brief incised texts, but these are mainly attributable to theAksumite or late Aksumite periods and were most abundantly recovered from the siteof Matara, far to the northeast in present-day Eritrea (Bernand et al. 1991). Asubstantial portion of pre-Aksumite ceramic wares would have been unsuitable foruse as ostraca, as they had scraped, semi-smoothed or pattern-burnished finishes thatwere too rough and porous to serve as useful writing surfaces (L. Phillipson 2013).Among the very numerous sherds and clay objects recovered from Seglamen, there isjust one example of what may be a single modelled raised letter, but no examples ofwritten or incised texts on potsherds. In the near absence of supporting early historical

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or ethnographic traditions for the use of such materials in the highlands of northernEthiopia and Eritrea, we can be almost equally confident that neither papyrus, woodnor other vegetable substrates were commonly used as pre-Aksumite writing sur-faces. In late prehistoric and early historic as in more recent times, suitably preparedhides or skins were probably the preferred writing surface. We cannot, however, lookto existing specimens or texts for direct evidence of the beginnings of pre-Aksumitemanuscript production. A few pre-Aksumite artefacts of organic materials—such asthe shell fragments and bone-handled awls found at Seglamen, which will bediscussed below—have been recovered, but animal skins and their derivatives aremuch more perishable. Given the prevalent soil and weather conditions of thenorthern Horn, archaeologists cannot anticipate finding recognisable manuscriptsattributable to the pre- or early Aksumite periods. Indeed, those reliably dated tothe late Aksumite and “early medieval” periods are scarce enough (D.W. Phillipson2012). Furthermore, while individual texts may carry internal dating evidence, theycannot predate themselves even when they purport to do so. Statements such as, “thisis a copy of a text written by my great grandfather’s ancestor in the year ….,” mayrecord the writer’s opinion, but they do not record reliable fact.

For some of the earliest indications of writing in the Horn, and in sub-Saharan Africa,we must look for evidence of parchment making, but since the skins on whichmanuscripts were written are highly perishable, whatever evidence can be adduced willbe indirect. Our consideration must turn to the less perishable tools used in theproduction of parchment. In exceptional circumstances, these may have been of metalor bone, but mostly they will have been of stone. Stone endures. This paper will look atthe tools used by present-day and recent Ethiopian artisans for the conversion of rawhides to finished manuscripts and will compare them with specific examples of archae-ologically recovered tools from the apparently wealthy pre-Aksumite site of Seglamen,located about 10 km south-west of Aksum in the highlands of northern Ethiopia.

Seglamen

Previous investigation of a small portion of the archaeological site at Seglamen, whichwas partially excavated in 1974, recovered a beautifully carved pre-Aksumite stoneinscription that had been re-used in the foundation of a post-Aksumite house (Schneider1976; Ricci and Fattovich 1987). This inscription most probably came from a pre-Aksumite temple that had been entirely dismantled and whose stones were used in laterconstructions, including for the large house by which it had been replaced. The site(14°03′20″ N, 38°39′10″ E) is a dramatic one, on a high bluff overlooking the fertileNegus/Haslo River valley at an altitude of 2,175 m. Only with the present series ofannual excavations conducted by the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and theUniversity of Axum Department of Archaeology, under the direction of R. Fattovichand L. Sernicola, have pre-Aksumite structures been uncovered. These have revealed amulti-layered complex of dry-stone or mud-mortared, undressed stone walls, pavedareas and domestic and industrial remains that were probably associated with and mayhave comprised part of the precincts of the obliterated temple that had been adorned bythe stone inscription (Fattovich et al. 2011). Except for the remains of the large andapparently wealthy post-Aksumite house conspicuously located near an edge of the site,

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and a present-day rural farmstead at another edge, there is little evidence of materialartefacts or construction post-dating the pre-Aksumite period. Most importantly, theabsence of Aksumite remains allows the confident attribution of most excavatedmaterials to early and late phases of pre-Aksumite building and occupation.

Absolute dates have not yet been obtained for the excavations at Seglamen, where theexcavators recognise three principal stratigraphic phases. The earliest of these, phaseone, saw a large building or buildings constructed on bare bedrock; it is attributedprimarily on the basis of ceramic affinities to sometime after about 800 BC. The latestconstructions, phase three, are similarly attributed to about 400 BC. Between thesemajor periods of construction, a poorly represented period of partial abandonment andless formal occupation of the site, phase two, may be indicated by ashy fireplace lensesfound among and on top of patches of building rubble. Repeated occupations, levellingand reconstructions of the site in pre-Aksumite times have left intact only the founda-tions and lowest courses of walls, and the bases of features, and artefacts that werecovered by or incorporated into areas of collapsed wall stones. Most of the lithic andother small artefacts with which this paper is concerned were found within or under thenumerous stony or ashy heaps that constitute the bulk of the deposit. It cannot thus beclaimed that they were found in completely undisturbed primary contexts; however,with only a few possible exceptions their phase assignments are reliable.

The recovered remains attest to a settled, wealthy and diverse economy at Seglamen:a repeatedly fired furnace or kiln, clay objects that had been subjected to prolongedfiring at a carefully controlled temperature, polished stone and clay statue fragments,imported as well as locally made ceramic wares, and artefacts of bone, glass, sea shell,knapped lithics, metal and numerous grinding stones. The site’s prosperity may havebeen due to its location in a well-watered and fertile area and to its strategic position on amain route leading in one direction to the Takezze River and thence into central andsouthern Ethiopia, and in the other direction joining a major route that extends from theRed Sea coast westwards into Shire (Sernicola and L. Phillipson 2011). Research intothe pre-Aksumite period is progressing rapidly, with work continuing or recentlycompleted at several major sites. Every new discovery leads to new debates over manyissues: whether there was a single over-arching pre-Aksumite culture or a series of inter-related communities and cultures, the relative strength of local indigenous elements asopposed to outside influences, the genetic and linguistic makeup of the pre-Aksumitepopulation, and much else. Several authors (Michels 2005; D’Andrea et al. 2008; D.W.Phillipson 2009a, 2012; Fattovich 2010) put these issues into context and give summarydescriptions of the principal pre-Aksumite sites of the northern Horn.

The When and the What of Parchment Manufacture

If the hypothesis that skin- or parchment-based manuscripts were produced in theearly- to mid-first millennium BC at pre-Aksumite Seglamen is to be entertained, twosubsidiary questions must be addressed. Is this compatible with other early evidenceof parchment production, and what is parchment? As early as the mid-third millen-nium BC, Egyptian scribes were writing on rolls of skin or leather (Reed 1972;Diringer 1982). By the eighth century BC, late Assyrian scribes in Mesopotamia usedde-haired goat or sheep skins aswell as clay tablets as writing surfaces (Dougherty 1928;

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Ganseer 1950; di Curci 2003). di Curci also sites evidence that parchment was used atthe mid-third-century BC site of Dura-Europos, near the present-day Syria–Iraq border.Some of these uses considerably antedate the creation of the library of King Eumenes(197–59 BC) at Pergamum in Asia Minor, which is traditionally cited as the first large-scale use of parchment. Evidence that in the mid-first millennium BC, pre-Aksumiteartisans at Seglamen were making parchment, presumably for use in manuscript pro-duction, is thus within the time range of other early uses of the material.

The aims of parchment manufacture are:

1. to clean a pelt (usually but not necessarily sheep, goat, horse or calfskin) of adheringfat and tissue on one side and of hair on the other;

2. to loosen or remove the complex mix of soluble compounds and lipids in which thecollagen fibres that constitute the pelt’s dermal layer are embedded;

3. to align the collagen structure in layers to create an opaque, firm, supple material;4. and to provide on either side a flat surface that is finely smoothed, but not slickly

polished, to which ink or paint will adhere without creating blots and withoutflaking once it has dried.

The crucial process that distinguishes parchment from leather is drying the wet skinunder evenly applied tension (Reed 1972:47). As a result, parchment acquires aninternal structure of compacted, layered collagen fibres unlike that of leather, whichhas an entangled, three-dimensional structure. Traditional European parchment manu-facture involves soaking skins for a few days or weeks in a water bath together withchemical reagents, of which the most usual is slaked lime. Formerly, other reagents,including fermenting vegetable matter but not including tannins, which produce leatherrather than parchment, were used. In the European tradition, after the skins are removedfrom the bath they are loosely draped over a bench and scraped on either side to removeloose flesh, fat and hair before they are stretched on a frame, dried, scraped again andbuffed (Reed 1972; de Hamel 1992; Carver and Spall 2004; Fuchs 2004).

The close similarity of the tools employed implies that the methods of parchmentproduction used by the pre-Aksumites at Seglamen were essentially the same as thosepresently and traditionally used in Ethiopia. Unlike the European process, that used inEthiopia involves scraping both sides of skins after they are stretched and does notemploy a lime bath or other chemical treatment; probably the greater ambienttemperatures in Ethiopia as compared to most of Europe allow naturally occurringbacteria and other organisms to perform a similar function in loosening the animalhairs and partially dissolving or digesting the collagen matrix. Sergew Haile Selassie(1981) and others have described traditional Ethiopian manuscript production (AssefaLiban 1958; Godet 1982; Mellors and Parsons 2002). In all reported instances, thescribe, who has had many years of intensive religious and literary training and isfrequently a deacon or priest, undertakes every stage of the work from preparation ofthe skins to binding and decorating a finished codex. There are some variations in theprocesses described. Mellors and Parsons (2002) report that scribes living in the areasouth of Gondar soak skins, whether fresh or dried, in water for seven to ten days beforestretching them on a frame and, while they are still wet, cleaning the flesh side with abroad-bladed, convex iron knife and a handstone. After the skin has dried for severaldays, an iron adze-like tool is used to remove hair from the outer side. Subsequentcleaning, especially on the flesh side, with the knife, handstone, water and sometimes

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soap readies the parchment for marking out with an awl and cutting to size. Likewise,Sergew relates that fresh skins are soaked in pure water for a few days and that sincedried skins require longer soaking to soften them and loosen the hairs, salt may be addedto the water to prevent putrification. The wet skin is then tightly stretched on a woodenframe, scraped clean on its flesh side and left to dry before the hair side is scraped.Whilestill on the frame, the skin is further scraped and rubbed with a handstone on both sides,polished with a side of the knife, washed and marked for cutting into sheets.

Godet (1982) described a similar process used by the then parchment maker in theMinistry for Culture and Sports in the Ethiopian Government, that omitted soaking freshskins in any liquid before they were stretched on a frame, but used much water whilecleaning first the flesh and then the hair side with a handstone. If the skin was very hard,pulverised limestone was rubbed in with the handstone to remove flesh, hair and otherimpurities. In 1997, I observed the use of pulverised limestone together with a vascularbasalt handstone by a scribe in Axum (L. Phillipson 2001:fig. 7). More recently, a similaruse of calcite has been observed in Axum (Sernicola, personal communication, 2013).Both sides of the skin are worked over repeatedly with a large, curved knife and with thestone. Assefa Liban (1958:25-6), reporting on the processes used by several church andgovernment scribes, likewise says that a wet and fresh skin is tightly stretched on a framewithout prior soaking and that the flesh side is cleaned with a curved knife before it iswashed with water and, while wet, rubbed with a coarse stone.

The stone tears out remaining small pieces of flesh, making rough the surfacewhich had been smoothed by knife. When it is rough, it is easy to apply theknife and tear out the remaining flesh. Again he cleans the skin with the knifeand washes it. Now the skin is exposed to the sun on the hairy side until it drieswhich takes three or four days. When it is perfectly dry, the hair is shaved byscratching the surface downward with a sharp edged hatchet…. After the hair isremoved, the process of cleaning the woolly side is the same as that of thefleshy side. The process of washing it, cleaning it with the curved knife androughing it with a pumice, etc. is repeated on both sides until the surface issmoothed and is as white as paper. (Assefa Liban 1958:256)

The Material Evidence

In this section, the relevant archaeological materials found at Seglamen will beconsidered in comparison with their historically or ethnographically known counter-parts. Representative examples of recently excavated artefacts are described here, butquantified summaries of their frequencies will not be available until current excava-tions are completed. Roman numerals indicate the trench, Arabic numerals thecontextual unit from which specific artefacts derive.

Stretchers

Carver and Spall (2004:fig. 6) were able to show archaeological evidence of the frameson which hides were stretched at a Pictish monastery site in Easter Ross, Scotland, in theform of a collection of pebbles around which the edges of the hide had been tied and

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bone pegs used to tighten the straining ropes that attached the hides to the wooden frame.No similar evidence is available from Seglamen, where very few organic remains havebeen preserved, and where the present-day Ethiopian practice of piercing the edges ofthe hide rather than using stone “buttons” to attach the hide to the straining ropes mayhave been followed. Sharp stone tips such as awls and borers—various shapes of whichhave been found in both the major phases of occupation at Seglamen—or bone or metaltools could have been used tomake the holes through which straining rods or ropes werethreaded as a means of fastening the hide to the frame. Fragments of metal tools whichmay have served as awls or as spear points were recovered from a phase-three floorpartly paved with schist slabs (V/22; VI/32).

Knives

Tools used to butcher and flay an animal are unlikely to have differed between thoseused on skins intended for parchment production and those used on skins destined forother purposes, though special efforts may have been made to keep parchment skinsunspotted by blood or bile. Since metal tools were apparently scarce in pre-AksumiteSeglamen, butchering knives were most likely of stone. Nothing like the broad-bladediron knives now used in Ethiopia for defleshing (flensing) and polishing parchment arelikely to have been available to the pre-Aksumites (Sergew Haile Selassie 1981:fig. 2;Godet 1982:fig. 2). Somewhat informally knapped, not very sharp basalt and chertknives have been recovered from the topsoil, among the soil and schist slabs on a phase-three floor and in a context predating or contemporary with the latest phase-threebuilding (VIII/1; VIII/22; VI/20). My own experiments have shown that use of suchtools is particularly successful for removing layers of fat from the inner surface of freshanimal skin, as they slip easily between the layers of tissue, unlike the use of moresharply edged lithic knives which tended to cut into and thus mar the skin (Fig. 1).

At a later stage in the preparation of manuscripts, small sharp tools would have beenneeded to cut the finished parchment into sheets or strips. Many of the backed blades andobsidian crescents found at Seglamen have utilisation scars characteristic of theirrepeated use as hafted or unhafted knives. Such knives would have been too delicatefor some purposes, but could have served for cutting parchment (Fig. 2). A particularlyclear example of such a tool from the Proto-Aksumite/Aksumite site of Mai AineAmbesa, near Aksum, is illustrated in L. Phillipson 2009 (plates 13, 14). A well-usedobsidian example from Seglamen was found in hard-packed foundation soil underlyinga phase three building (VIII/83); a similarly utilised chalcedony backed bladelet with abroken tip was found underlying the latest phase three building (II/17). Additional laterpre-Aksumite examples are from the topsoil and from soil beneath the latest building(V/1; V/20; V/22; V/33; V/I6; VI/19; VIII/1; VIII/22; VIII/82; VIII/83); early examplescome from the collapse of the most ancient building (II/84; V/40;VI/52).

Adzes and Scrapers

According to recent Ethiopian accounts, a metal adze is used for removing hair fromthe outer surface of a parchment skin and, usually, a knife for cleaning the innersurface. This compares with the use of flaked stone scrapers by some hide-workers insouthern Ethiopia (Clark and Prince 1978; Clark and Kurashina 1981; Brandt and

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Weedman 1997, 2002; Yonatan Sahle and Agazi Negash 2010). After use as a hide-scraper, I have noted that a unifacially trimmed flake will have predominantly crushedand abraded modification on its utilised edge with small, irregularly step-flaked andother scars arising from that edge and extending onto both faces, but mainly onto thedorsal surface. This pattern of wear is not found at Seglamen, where abrasion onrestricted portions of the dorsal surfaces of some scraper-like tools indicates that theyhad been used to assist in the pre-firing formation of scraped-ware pots (L. Phillipson2013). There is no evidence that knapped lithic tools were used at Seglamen in thepreparation of skins. As metal was probably too scarce to use for skin dressing,handstones, of which an unusually large number and variety have been found at thesite, were most probably used for all stages of cleaning and polishing the hides.

Handstones

This term designates stones used for rubbing, grinding, polishing or similar abrasiveactions that are of convenient size and shape to be manipulated with one hand. Usuallythey have an ovate, circular or sub-rectangular plan, flat or gently convex faces, maximum

Fig. 1 Shale knife roughly backed right edge, utilised upper portion of left edge; scale in millimetres (VIII/1)

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dimensions of 50 to 150 mm and weigh less than 2 kg (Figs. 3 and 4). They may be usedon their own to clean and smooth a surface, or in conjunction with a stationary grindstoneto pulverise an intermediate material (L. Phillipson 2012). Although they may be made ofmany different materials—quartz, quartzite, sandstone, fine basalt, vascular basalt andsyenite examples all occur at Seglamen—when used to clean and prepare skins they are,frequently erroneously, called pumice stones. Nowadays, in Ethiopia and in Europe,handstones are used alternately with a broad-bladed metal knife to clean, smooth and

Fig. 2 Obsidian backed microlith, heavily utilised as a cutting tool on edge and right tip; scale in millimetres(VIII/82)

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polish the stretched skin and to rub in powdered limestone, ash or any other auxiliarymaterial. At Axum in the late 1990s, a scribe cleaned skins with a vascular basalthandstone, about 120 mm in diameter, that was trimmed to a sub-ovate shape withrounded edges and a slightly convex face (L. Phillipson 2001:fig. 7). Sergew HaileSelassie (1981:fig. 2) illustrates three smaller so-called pumice stones, two of which appear

Fig. 3 Vascular basalt handstone; scale in millimetres (VIII/22)

Fig. 4 Vascular chalcedony and amorphous quartz handstone; scale in millimetres (VIII/91)

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to be of vascular basalt; the third is perhaps of hard sandstone or quartzite. Carver and Spall(2004:fig. 4) illustrate three neatly shaped rectangular to sub-rectangular stones, whichactually are of pumice, that were found together with other remains of European monasticparchment making. Mellors and Parsons (2002:fig. 2) illustrate the use of a handstone ofunspecified material to clean the flesh side of a stretched skin. This stone, which is quiteflat, is entirely covered by the operator’s open palm and fingers.

Handstones can be used only on a hide that is tautly stretched, as they would tearragged holes if used on unstretched skins. The ethnographically attested Ethiopian practiceof cleaning skins while they are stretched is thus implied by these stones. Fuchs (2004:4)describes their present-day use in the European parchment-making tradition.

Polishing is done while the skin is still stretched on the frame, either with acrescent-moon-shaped knife …. with [a] pumice [stone] or with a speciallyprepared sanding bread. For the latter, bread dough is mixed with glass splinters,formed into small rolls and baked. The parchment surface can be treated far moresensitively with such sanding bread than with pumice or a knife.

Fuch’s description implies that the best stones for smoothing parchment surfaceswould either have numerous hard, sharp, but not deep, cutting edges like the sandingbread or would be flat and smooth like the sides of a well-polished knife.

Both anciently and presently, handstones were and are used to assist with ceramicvessel production and for food preparation as well. While medium-textured handstonesmay have been used for intermediate stages in the preparation of skins, theymay also havebeen used for other purposes including the preparation of foods, cosmetics, spices,pigments and medicine, to assist in forming ceramic vessels, and for pulverising thelimestone that was sometimes rubbed into skins to whiten them by absorbing grease andimpurities (Assefa Liban 1958; L. Phillipson 2001). At Maqaber Gacewa in easternTigray, I have noted unmodified use-worn ovate river cobbles used to clay-plaster andburnish the walls of a pre-Aksumite temple. Detailed morphologies indicate the mostprobable uses of many handstones. Those with rasp-like surfaces with many sharp,shallow cutting edges would function like the sanding bread described above to shaveand clean a parchment skin, but would not have been suitable as potting tools or forculinary preparation. The slightly rough surfaces of medium-textured handstones giveless definitive evidence of how they were used. Those with a circular plan and an evenlyconvex face are most suitable for shaping hammered-ware pots. Those suited for hidedressing are flatter and may be ovate or rectangular in plan (L. Phillipson 2012, 2013).Distinctions are easier to makewith respect to medium- to fine-textured basalt handstoneswith evenly worn, unscratched, flat or slightly convex working faces (Fig. 5). Thesecould have been used only to smooth and burnish clean, non-gritty flat surfaces withdimensions considerably larger than the maximum diameters of the handstones. It isdifficult to think of any material other than parchment in the later stages of its preparationthat meets this description, the more so since the several traditional and ethnographicaccounts of parchment production cited above, European as well as Ethiopian, allemphasise the need to smooth the skin by rubbing with a flat surface. Nowadays, theedge and side of a curved, broad-bladed knife are used; in the absence of such a metaltool, a finely ground and shaped handstone would have served the same purpose. Pot-burnishing stones tend to be much smaller, more convex and to have a variably scratchedsurface resulting from contact with sand grains in the clay.

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Examples of roughly textured, rectangular handstones include one of an unusualcombination of vascular chert and amorphous quartz, and one of tightly packed, smallquartz crystals, both from the soil beneath a phase-three building (II/83); another withsmall quartz crystals was found among the collapsed wall stones of the most ancientphase-one building (VIII/91) (Fig. 4). So far as I am aware, such handstones areunique to this site. They must have experienced heavy and prolonged use to partlydull their hard crystal edges. Whether they were employed by fully engaged artisansor were passed as treasured tools to successive generations, their condition indicatesthat the careful preparation of stretched skins was more than an occasional activity. Avascular basalt handstone (Fig. 3) that closely resembles the ethnographic specimenshown in L. Phillipson 2001 (fig. 7) comes from the schist-paved phase three floor(VIII/22). Multiple examples of handstones with a slightly gritty texture, mainly of agranitic stone that is probably syenite, have been recovered from all the pre-Aksumitephases and smoothly worn burnishing stones, mainly of fine basalt, from the early(II/64; VIII/84; VIII/88; VIII/91) and late phases (I/1; V/1; VIII/22) at Seglamen.

Awls

After the pelt is thoroughly cleaned, stretched and dried, the Ethiopian scribe marks whatare to be the corners of pages by pricking holes with a sharply pointed awl and then uses ablunter awl, or stylus, and a reed or other straight edge to draw lines between these marks.

Fig. 5 Fine basalt burnisher; scale in millimetres (VIII/1)

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The pages are cut out and additional lines ruled to mark the spacing for columns of text,margins and decorative headings. Two awls, one used for pricking and one for markingout, are illustrated by Assefa Liban (1958:figs. 5 and 6); these are blunt metal spikesapproximately 60 to 80mm long set into short wooden handles. De Hamel (1992:figs. 14and 15) illustrates similar medieval European tools. By amuch-appreciated serendipity ofarchaeological preservation, two remarkably similar awls, 84 and 105mm long, completewith their metal (not yet analysed) spikes and bone handles, have been found at Seglamen(Fig. 6). One of these was found below a collapsed wall of the site’s earliest phase-onebuilding; the other appeared to derive from a late pre-Aksumite context (VI/6, andVIII/92/93). However, according to the field director,

it cannot be excluded that the [seemingly later] awl may originate from anearlier context, as it was included in the filling of a foundation pit that mighthave cut into the lower strata and mixed the artefacts contained in it (Sernicola,personal communication, 2013).

In addition, a metal awl bent into a small loop at one end and several fragments whichmay have been parts of other awls come from phase-one building rubble (VI/53)(Fig. 7).

Fig. 7 Awl; scale in millimetres (VI/53)

Fig. 6 Bone-handled awl; scale in millimetres (VI/6)

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Burnishers and Erasers

Before the actual work of writing or perhaps illumination could start, the scribeshould not forget to treat the surface of the sheet with a slab to improve itssmoothness and ability to take ink and colour. (Sergew Haile Selassie 1981:12)

In addition to their use to rub over and give a final uniform finish to each sheet beforewriting commences, a small burnisher would be needed to re-smooth any erased (byapplication of a small abrasive handstone, Fig. 9) or scratched-out places which thescribe might wish to overwrite. A photograph of one of the “slabs” which Sergewmentions shows a neatly shaped, hard stone burnisher with a smooth circular face, about35 mm in diameter, with rounded edges and a truncated conical profile. Both AssefaLiban (1958) and Godet (1982) record that while veritable stone burnishers are preferredthey were difficult for their informants to obtain; as an alternative, smooth piecesof fine china, such as fragments of electric insulators were used, but traditionallymade—relatively soft—ceramic sherds were not used. In 2012, Qes Hailu, a scribeworking in Axum, used a stone burnisher of a material—probably limestone—which hehad collected near Debra Damo for the final preparation of parchment sheets (Sernicolaand Sobania, personal communications, 2013). This well-used sub-rectangular, tabularstone measured approximately 60×45×10mm. Superficial red and black ink stains showthat it had been applied over areas of rubbed-out corrections on freshly written sheets.Reed (1972:7) mentions but does not illustrate an ivory burnisher and a fine sandstoneeraser that were found together in a leather bag in Tutankhamen’s tomb; de Hamel(1992:fig. 52) illustrates a modern European polished-stone burnishing tool.

Characteristic features of parchment burnishers are the smoothness and near orabsolute flatness of their worn surfaces, as well as the absence of any sharp edges orcorners whichmight scratch the parchment. Their relatively small sizes allow them to beused with delicacy. A fine Aksumite example of a rectangular burnishing stone withrounded edges, 45×27×25 mm, found in a late horizon of the fill of the Mausoleum inthe main Stelae Field at Aksum is illustrated by D.W. Phillipson (2000, fig. 197b).Inscribed on one of its larger faces are three Ethiopic letters that can be read as salaha (torub). Except for the lack of an inscription, this Aksumite stone is closely matched by aregularly shaped, rectangular quartz burnishing stone from soil overlying the remains ofSeglamen’s earliest phase-one building (II/65). Most of the use wear on both the pre-Aksumite burnisher from Seglamen and on the similarly shaped Aksumite burnisher ison their square ends and on edges where they had been grasped by a scribe, with lesswear on their larger surfaces. Quartz is a material that wears very slowly; heavily wornsurfaces on the rectangular burnisher from Seglamen thus indicate prolonged use,perhaps over the course of multiple generations (Fig. 8). Additional examples of smallbasalt parchment-burnishers are from late phase contexts (VI/19; VIII/22). Stones usedas pot-burnishers, which are also found at Seglamen, can be distinguished fromparchment-burnishers by their more pronounced convex worn surfaces that are markedby irregular minor scratches resulting from contact with sandy particles in the clay.

Two other types of small stone tool that would have been useful to a pre-Aksumitescribe have been recovered. One of these from the topsoil (II/1) closely matches in sizeand shape three Pictish examples excavated from an eighth-century AD site in Scotland(Carver & Spall 2004:fig. 4), except that a hole for a presumed suspension loop wasincompletely drilled on the Seglamen example (Fig. 9). The Pictish stones are of actual

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pumice, while the pre-Aksumite one is of similarly textured siltstone. Carver and Spallinterpret the Pictish pumice stones, which were found to have a white substance trappedin the natural cavities at their heavily rubbed ends, as tools used to rub chalk into

Fig. 8 Quartz burnisher; scale in millimetres (II/65)

Fig. 9 Fine sandstone burnisher/eraser; scale in millimetres (II/1)

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parchment in order to improve its superficial qualities. Historically in Europe and inEthiopia, small pumice or similarly textured stones were also used to scratch out blots orerrors in written text. Before an erasure could be overwritten, the scratched area wouldneed to be smoothed and redressed with chalk or finely powdered limestone. Anotherwise enigmatic carved piece of soft limestone with flat rubbed ends from an upperlevel at Seglamen (I/2) may have served to whiten small sheets of parchment or areaswithin them (Fig. 10). As discussed above, the well-polished, moderately sized, flat-faced handstones of fine basalt found at Seglamen would have imparted a smooth finishto entire sheets or rolls of parchment. Very small examples like that shown above (Fig. 5)would have been needed to deal with small corrections. The marked flatness and clearlydefined circumference of this example’s polished area suggest that it may have beenlittle used before it was lost or discarded.

Bookbinding

In keeping with the predominant ancient use of parchment, it is assumed that the evidentlyprolific manufacture of parchment at Seglamen was intended for manuscript production.There is as yet no incontrovertible evidence bearing on the question of whether pre-Aksumite manuscripts were in the form of loose pages, scrolls (horizontal), rolls (vertical)or codices (bound sheets). The several awls recovered from Seglamen might suggest that

Fig. 10 Limestone burnisher; scale in millimetres (I/2)

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prepared skins were marked out and cut into straight-sided sheets as an initial step in thepreparation of books, but uniform rectangular sheets are equally required for the prepa-ration of long scrolls or rolls. Once individual parchment sheets are produced, it is not acomplex matter to fold them in half and stitch several sheets into a single gathering, if notinto a book of multiple fascicles. According to de Hamel (1992:66),

The earliest surviving Coptic bookbindings date from around the fourth century[AD]. They are held together by chain stitching, that is, with each gatheringsewn through the centre and then linked around its spine to the next gather-ing…. The book is a stack of gatherings joined one to another with the sewingof the first and last gatherings knotted into the covers…. Greek and Orientalbindings were basically like this, and so were the earliest monastic bindings ofwestern Europe. Ethiopian bindings still are ….

If we assume that the known survival of ancient Coptic books provides no more than aterminus post quem for the inception of bookbinding, it is not entirely implausible that theart may have been practised in northern Ethiopia in the first millennium BC.Nevertheless, it would need stronger evidence than we have at present to substantiatesuch a claim. The only excavated artefacts from Seglamen which might have some slightrelevance to this are a few small pieces of mother-of-pearl shell (Pinctada margritifora;identified by Dr. A. Carannante, Department of Asian, African and MediterraneanStudies, University of Naples, L’Orientale, 21.05.2012), which is native to the Red Seaand the Indo-Pacific Ocean. About ten very small fragments of this shell were recoveredfrom the floor of the most ancient building on the site (VIII/92) and an intact, shaped andpolished rectangular piece was obtained from a possibly disturbed context (VI/53). Thesecould conceivably have been used to decorate the covers of bound books and such usemight have ensured their careful handling and ultimate survival, but other uses are at leastequally probable. The shell fragments are better interpreted as providing additionalevidence of a wealthy and complex society at Seglamen with wide-ranging contacts.

Concluding Discussion

Although it may be argued that some of the individual tools described in this study couldhave been used for purposes other than parchment production, when considered togetherthey provide strong evidence for the preparation and use of manuscript parchment in boththe early and late pre-Aksumite phases at Seglamen. The long, relatively delicate awls andsome of the hand- and burnishing stones described in this paper give particularly convinc-ing evidence of early parchment production. The recovery from excavated contexts ofmultiple examples of each of several artefact types associated with the preparation ofstretched skins, and the heavy use-wear on hard stone implements, indicates that the craftwas practised at Seglamen by more than a few individuals over an extended period of time.If the surmise that there had been a now-obliterated pre-Aksumite temple at Seglamen iscorrect, the parchment-makers were probably attached to or associated with it. Whethertheywere artisan hide workers, priestly scribes or political administrators, andwhether theirpresence constituted a formal or informal scriptorium are matters for conjecture.

While there remains some debate as to which, where and how many languageswere spoken in the first millennium BC in the northern Horn, there is no doubt that

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the pre-Aksumite written languages, whose derivatives include the EthiopianOrthodox church’s ecclesiastical Gecez and several of the dominant modernlanguages of the area, were allied to and influenced by those of south Arabia.South Arabian practices are also credited with influencing some of the moreconspicuous elements of pre-Aksumite art, monumental architecture and, by infer-ence, political organisation (D.W. Phillipson 2009a, 2012; Fattovich 2010; Japp et al.2011). Looking in the opposite direction, the use of parchment, the inferred presenceof a scriptorium or scribal school at Seglamen and other lines of evidence notconsidered here point westward to contacts between the pre-Aksumite inhabitantsof western Tigray and their contemporaries in the Nile Valley. Underlying theseexternal influences, it cannot be emphasised too strongly that all the evidence ofnon-elite structures and activities, including ceramics, tool knapping, subsistence andsettlement indicate that whatever external influences may have been at work, theyacted upon indigenous African people and African cultures to create a new complexof civilisations whose diversities and richness are only now becoming recognised as aresult of ongoing research.

Acknowledgments Particular gratitude is expressed to the Scientific Director, Professor R. Fattovich,Field Director, Dr. L. Sernicola and members of the research team at Seglamen for the opportunity tocontribute to their research and for their unfailing support of my continuing study of pre-Aksumite lithics.

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