The word is derived from the Koinē Greek city name, Pergamum in Anatolia, where parchment was … See more

Today the term parchment is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension. The term originally referred only to the skin of … See more

The word parchment evolved (via the Latin pergamenum and the French parchemin) from the name of the city of Pergamon, which was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period. The city so dom… See more

Parchment (or vellum) continues to be use for ritual or legal reasons. Rabbinic literature traditionally maintains that the institution of employing parchment made of animal hides for the writing of ritual objects, as detailed below. In th… See more

Parchment is prepared from pelt – i.e. wet, unhaired, and limed skin – by drying at ordinary temperatures under tension, most commonly on a wooden frame known as a stretching frame.
After a carc… See more

To make the parchment more aesthetically pleasing or more suitable for the scribes, special treatments were used. According to Reed there were a variety of these treatments. Rubbing pumice powder into the flesh side o… See more

The way in which parchment was processed (from hide to parchment) has undergone a tremendous evolution based on time and location. Parchment and vellum are not the sole methods of preparing a… See more