Brain Sharpenerzz

The story begins not with ink but with impression. In the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia around 3000 BC the first "pen" was the  stylus  a pointed instrument of bone metal or reed used to press wedge-shaped cuneiform characters into wet clay tablets. This was writing as physical sculpture permanent and robust but immobile and cumbersome. The true marriage of pen and ink began in Ancient Egypt around 3200 BC with the  reed pen . Scribes would harvest reeds from the Nile delta fashioning one end into a narrow squared-off point with a slit to channel ink. Dipped into soot-and-gum-based inks these reeds were used to write on papyrus scrolls recording everything from administrative accounts to the sacred texts of the Book of the Dead. The reed pen was a significant leap enabling faster more fluid writing than was possible with a stylus. It was the primary writing instrument for centuries, spreading to the Greeks and Romans who used it to lay the philosophical and legal founda...