Scenes from the inbox

[hatam_soferet]

Here’s an interesting question:

Dear Ms. Friedman,

this is not specifically about religious scrolls, but as a scribe, could you tell me how many handwritten letters can usually fit on the parchment made from one cow, or on the parchment made from one goat,
or on the parchment made from one sheep? Assuming the letter sizes, lines distances, and margins that were usually used before the invention of printing, so that the result is readable and doesn’t look
rushed or squeezed.

I’m asking out of curiosity; I was wondering what kind of short stories, treatises, poems or articles could fit on one hide.

Answer:

“Assuming the letter sizes, lines distances, and margins that were usually used before the invention of printing, so that the result is readable and doesn’t look rushed or squeezed.”

That’s a huge assumption, which may be shaping your thinking in an unhelpful way. If you look at different manuscripts from the appropriate period you will see an enormous variation in letter sizes. A skilled scribe with good materials can write a truly tiny book which nonetheless doesn’t look “rushed or squeezed.” The style of writing also makes a difference; for instance, black-letter takes up a great deal less space than uncial letters of the same height, so one can fit more letters in. Speaking as a scribe, the amount of text I have to write and the size of the available media often dictates my choice of script and size.

An instructive exercise would be to look at, for example, a small psalter or prayer-book; note the page dimensions, and count the average number of letters per line and lines per page. Many libraries have online collections, see below. Find out how much writing surface one generally gets from a hide by asking parchment suppliers. Use your page dimension to calculate number of pages per hide; remember you can write on both sides. You might also find the fields of book history and codicology fruitful.

Links: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Default.aspx
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=arts&col_id=173

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.