scroll

thumb|350px|The Joshua Roll, [[Vatican Library. An illuminated scroll, probably of the 10th century, created in the Byzantine empire.]] right|thumb|Scroll of the Book of Esther, [[Seville, Spain]] right|thumb|Ingredients used in making ink for Hebrew scrolls today A scroll (from the Old French escroe or escroue), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.

==Structure== thumb|Volumen and Rotulus, two types of scrolls A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyrus or parchment glued together at the edges. Scrolls may be marked divisions of a continuous roll of writing material. The scroll is usually unrolled so that one page is exposed at a time, for writing or reading, with the remaining pages rolled and stowed to the left and right of the visible page. Text is written in lines from the top to the bottom of the page. Depending on the language, the letters may be written left to right, right to left, or alternating in direction (boustrophedon).