SKINS. 849

of adverting to the difference between it and skins less
artificially prepared. The improvement is said to have been
invented at Pergamos, at a time when Ptolemy Philadelphus
prohibited the exportation of papyrus from Egypt, with the
view of obstructing the formation of a grand library, which
Eumenes, king of Pergamos, was forming, and which he
feared might eclipse his own great library at Alexandria.
It is certain that the best parchment was made at Pergamos,
and skins thus prepared were hence called charta pergamena,
of which our ‘parchment’ is a corruption. In Greek they
are sometimes called membrana, under which name St. Paul
mentions them in 2 Timothy iv. .

Parchment came to be used for legal, sacred, and other
particular classes of works; but the comparative cheapness
of papyrus, combined with as much durability as could be
required for the more common literary works, maintained
it still in general use. The Jews soon began to write their
Scriptures on parchment, of which the rolls of the laws used
in their synagogues are still composed.

Leather was also used in the manufacture of saddles,
though at a-later period; as in early times a piece of hide,
leather, or cloth thrown across the back of the animal was
the common substitute. The expression in Judges xix., “ two