ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Scriptorium

A scriptorium is a room where people a long time ago used to write books by hand. Imagine you have some pages of a book that need to be copied by hand so that more people can read the book. That's a lot of work, right? So people would gather in a big room called a scriptorium to do it together.

In the scriptorium, there would be lots of people sitting at tables with quills and ink pots. They would carefully copy the words on the original pages onto new pages. Sometimes, there would be a person reading out loud from the original book so that everyone could copy at the same pace.

The scriptorium was also a place where important books were kept safe. Back then, there were no printing presses, so books were very valuable and rare. The scriptorium was a special room where only the smartest and most educated people were allowed to work.

Overall, the scriptorium was just a big room where people went to write and copy books by hand. It was a very important place because it helped preserve knowledge and history for future generations to learn from.