“... when... Ptolemy suppressed the export of paper, parchment was invented at Pergamum…”
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 13
According to Pliny the Elder, parchment was developed in the city of Pergamum (now Bergama, Turkey) because a king of Egypt, fearing that Pergamum's great library might overshadow that of Alexandria, stopped exporting papyrus to the city.
It seems more likely that parchment already existed and was refined at Pergamum. Also, this was not the first time animal skin had been written on. Leather had been used occasionally, possibly dating back to circa 2000 B.C.E. However, previous attempts involved tanning the leather and produced documents that were slightly hairy, stiff, and one-sided. Parchment, on the other hand, was made from the skins of sheep, calves, and goats that were cleaned and, crucially, scraped thoroughly. Both sides of the smooth, flexible surface were ideal for writing and ultimately allowed sheets to be sewn together into "books" that were far easier to read than papyrus scrolls. Although papyrus was cheaper than parchment, it was Europe's favored surface up until the fourteenth century's advances in paper making, especially for medieval illuminated manuscripts, such as the stunning Tres Riches Heures of the Ducde Berry of the early 1400s.
The finest parchments, especially those made from the skins of very young, or even unborn, animals, were called vellum. The term is often used today for any kind of high-quality special paper.
