Western writers at this time wrote longer texts as scrolls, and these were stored in shelving with
small cubbyholes, similar to a modern winerack. The word volume, from the Latin word volvere
("to roll"), comes from these scrolls. Court records and notes were written on tree bark and leaves,
while important documents were written on papyrus. The modern English word book comes from
the Proto-Germanic *bokiz, referring to the beechwood on which early written works were recorded^[1].

The book was not needed in ancient times, as many early Greek texts—scrolls—were thirty pages
long, which fits into the hand. Roman works were often longer, running to hundreds of pages.

The Greeks used to comically call their books tome, meaning "to cut". The Egyptian Book of the Dead
was a massive 200 pages long but was never meant to be read by the living. Torahs, editions of
the Jewish holy book, were also held in special holders when read.

Scrolls can be rolled in one of two ways. The first method is to wrap the scroll around a single core,
similar to a modern roll of paper towels. While simple to construct, a single core scroll has a major
disadvantage: in order to read text at the end of the scroll, the entire scroll must be unwound.

This is partially overcome in the second method, which is to wrap the scroll around two cores,
as in a Torah. With a double scroll, the text can be accessed from both beginning and end, and
the portions of the scroll not being read can remain wound. This still leaves the scroll a
sequential-access medium: to reach a given page, one generally has to unroll and re-roll many other pages.

The first solution invented to overcome this problem was a set of simple wooden boards sewn together,
around the 1st century A.D. Romans called this simple book a codex—the Latin for the trunk of a tree.

However, it was the early Coptic Christians of Egypt who made the first breakthrough. They discovered
that by folding sheets of vellum or parchment in half and sewing them through the fold, they could produce
a book that could be written on both sides. Wooden boards held it together, and the whole book was
slipped into a goatskin leather bag to be carried.

Codices were a significant improvement over papyrus or vellum scrolls in that they were easier to handle.

But despite allowing writing on both sides of the leaves, they were still foliated—numbered on the leaves,
like the Indian books. The idea spread quickly through the early churches, and we get the word bible from
the town where the Byzantium monks established their first scriptorium, Byblos, in modern Lebanon.

The idea of numbering each side of the page—Latin pagina, "to fasten"—appeared when the text of the
individual testaments of the bible were combined and text had to be searched through more quickly.
This book format became the preferred way of preserving manuscript or printed material.

Early and medieval codices were bound with flat spines, and it was not until the 15th century that books
began to have the rounded spines associated with hardcovers today^[2]. Because the vellum of early books
would react to humidity by swelling, causing the book to take on a characteristic wedge shape, the wooden
covers of medieval books were often secured with straps or clasps. These straps, along with metal bosses
on the book's covers to keep it raised off of the surface that it rests on, are collectively known as furniture.

Thus, Western books from the 5th century onwards were bound between hard covers, with pages made from
parchment folded and sewn onto strong cords or ligaments that were attached to wooden boards and covered
with leather. Since early books were exclusively handwritten on handmade materials, sizes and styles varied
considerably, and each book was a unique creation or a copy of it.