On potsherds

30 June 2026

When papyrus ran short, the monks of the Egyptian desert wrote their psalms on broken pottery — an ostrakon cost nothing, and a verse held in the hand is a verse half-learned already.

Schoolboys, too, scratched their letters on them, and tax-collectors their receipts. The humblest writing surface in the ancient world turns out to have preserved a great deal of ordinary life.

There is no shame in a small surface. Some things are meant to be written quickly and kept anyway.