The Codex: The First Bound Book

The majority of human history was written on awkward clay tablets and scrolls. Writings were mainly either carved into clay slabs or written on scrolls under the Roman Empire. As you might expect, these manuscripts were brittle, difficult to keep, and difficult to move.

The codex, a stack of bound pages considered to be the first form of the book, was developed by the Romans to simplify the medium. The initial codices were composed of bound wax tablets; later, parchment made of animal skin was used instead, which more closely resembled pages. According to ancient historians, Julius Caesar invented the first codex by stacking papyrus pages to make a crude notepad, although bound codices did not become common in Rome until the first century or so.

Julius Caesar ordered the first bound book—a collection of papyrus—to make a codex in place of a scroll, which could be up to 32 feet (10 meters) long and required unrolling to read. This gave information security a safer and more manageable approach to be maintained. A table of contents and index could be used because the codex could carry numerous volumes, had a built-in cover for preservation, and the pages could be numbered for easy reference.

Early Christians employed this one of the Ancient Roman Inventions extensively to create Bible codices, which later spread to other regions alongside Christianity.