... been poking around THIS new-to-me site with happy result. In words that amuse section, for 2004, about halfway down is discussion of "codex' thus: codex (pl. codices) – a manuscript (handwritten) volume, especially of a classic work or of the Scriptures ('manuscript' in this sense means "handwritten")
From Latin caudex, tree stump. As I understand it, the word was then used for "waxed wooden strips on which to write", then "a collection of such strips", and then "a collection of paper or parchment on which to write". The method was cheaper than writing on a scroll (lower quality parchment; writing on both sides) and easier to handle, but less durable. The codex format became more respectable when impoverished early Christians took to it for their texts, which thus came to be called codices.
The parchment codex was copied in a hand known as "khutsuri" or "priestly hand".
... as a semi world famous ex collector of "caudiciform" plants from around the world-- those with underground tubers or swollen root masses (my favorite, from here in South Texas, has a delicate set of tendrils and tiny yellow flowere, and an underground bulb anywhere up to a meter in diameter, enabling it to easily survive a decade of drought)... and as an avid woodworker, I highly dispute the possibility that the flats of wood used to writing were EVER once cut from a caudex, but rather are "riven" or split from the soft and straight parts of a suitable sapling of small diameter.
This web site is a real "hoot" (good connotation). I'm not a linguist, academitician or any filed related to words other than having an interest in using them. Real hoot!
The Romans also wrote on thin sheets of "paper" peeled off the trunk of a type of tree. Many examples of these were found down a latrine in the Roman legionary camp at Vindolanda, along the Hadrian Wall, in the UK (link).
