People have always needed to exchange information. That is why the history of mail began long before the advent of writing and letters familiar to modern people. In ancient times, voice was used to convey news. This method was preserved in some regions until the Middle Ages. For example, in the Inca Empire, for many centuries there were herald messengers who spread news from the capital, moving around the country using a network of branched mountain roads. Later they began to use cords and threads as information carriers.
Cuneiform tablets
The first writing system in the classical sense of the word is cuneiform. With its appearance around 3 thousand years BC. e. mail history switched to fundamentally new level. Cuneiform writing spread among the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia: Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites.
Messages were written with a wooden stick on clay tablets while the clay retained its softness. Due to the specific instrumentation, characteristic wedge-shaped marks appeared. Envelopes for such letters were also made of clay. To read the message, the recipient had to break the “packaging”.
Ancient Postal History for a long time remained virtually unknown. A great contribution to its study was made by the discovery of the library of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, who ruled in the 7th century. BC e. By his order, an archive of 25 thousand clay tablets was created. Among the cuneiform texts were both state documents and ordinary letters. The library was opened in the 19th century. Thanks to a unique find, it was possible to decipher a cuneiform script that was previously incomprehensible to translators.
Shells and drawings
The Huron Indians made do with shell beads. They were strung on threads and entire letters were received this way. Each plate had a specific color. Black meant death, red meant war, yellow meant tribute, etc. The ability to read such colored belts was considered a privilege and wisdom.
The history of mail has also passed the “illustrated” stage. Before writing letters, people learned to draw. ancient, samples of which are still found today in remote caves, this is also a kind of mail that went to the modern addressee for entire generations. The language of drawings and tattoos is still preserved among isolated Polynesian tribes.
Alphabet and sea mail
Its unique system The ancient Egyptians had letters. In addition, they developed a pigeon post service. The Egyptians used hieroglyphs to convey information. Much less known is the fact that it was these people who created the first prototype of the alphabet. Among the numerous hieroglyphs-drawings, they developed hieroglyphs that conveyed sounds (there were 24 of them in total).
Further this principle encryption was developed by other peoples of the Ancient East. The first alphabet proper is considered to be the alphabet that appeared in the city of Ugarit on the territory of modern Syria approximately in the 15th century. BC e. A similar system then spread to other Semitic languages.
The Phoenicians had their own alphabet. This trading people became famous for their skilled shipbuilders. Sailors delivered mail to numerous colonies in different parts of the Mediterranean. Based on the Phoenician alphabet, the Aramaic and Greek alphabets arose, from which almost all modern systems writing.
Angarion
Angarion is an ancient Persian postal service established in the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century. BC e. It was founded by King Cyrus II the Great. Before this, the delivery of mail from one end of the state to the other could take months, which categorically did not suit the authorities.
During the time of Cyrus, hangars (the so-called horse-drawn couriers) appeared. The postal business of that era gave rise to the first shoots of what still exists today. The longest road of the angarion stretched from Susa to Sardis, and its length was 2500 kilometers. The huge route was divided into a hundred stations at which horses and couriers were changed. With this effective system the Persian kings freely passed on instructions to their satraps in the most distant provinces of the vast empire.
Under the successor of Cyrus II, Darius I, the Royal Road was built, the quality of which turned out to be so high that Alexander the Great, Roman emperors and even Charles I, who ruled the medieval Frankish Empire in the 9th century, used the example of its organization (and the angarion in general) in their state.
Roman era
As noted above, the Roman history of mail and letters was in many ways similar to the Persian. In the republic, and later in the empire, there was a parallel public and private message transmission system. The latter was based on the activities of numerous messengers who were hired (or used as slaves) by wealthy patricians.
At the height of its power, the Roman Empire covered vast territories in three parts of the world. Thanks to unified network branched roads already in the 1st century AD, it was possible to confidently send a letter from Syria to Spain or from Egypt to Gaul. Small stations where horses were changed were located at a distance of only a few kilometers. Packages were transported by horse-drawn couriers, and carts were used for luggage.
The fastest and most efficient government mail was available only for official correspondence. Later, special permits were issued to traveling officials and Christian priests to use this system. The state postal service was managed by the praetorian prefect close to the emperor, and from the 4th century by the master of offices.
Medieval Europe
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the former postal system fell apart. Messages began to be delivered with great difficulty. The obstacles were borders, the absence and desolation of roads, crime and the disappearance of a single centralized authority. Postal services became even worse with the rise of feudalism. Large landowners often charged huge tolls for travel through their territory, which made it extremely difficult for couriers to operate.
The only at least somewhat centralized organization in Europe in the early Middle Ages remained the church. Monasteries, archives, churches and administrative bodies needed a constant exchange of information across much of politically fragmented Europe. Entire religious orders began to undertake the organization of postal communications. Often, important correspondence throughout the Old World was carried by wandering monks and priests, whose cassock and spiritual status were often the best means of protection against trouble with strangers.
Their own corporations of messengers arose at universities, where students flocked from all over the world. The couriers of educational institutions in Naples, Bologna, Toulouse and Paris became especially famous. They maintained contact between students and their families.
Merchants and artisans needed mail most of all. Without exchanging written messages with their partners, they could not establish trade and sales of products. Separate merchant postal corporations arose around guilds and other associations of merchants. The standard of such a system was created in Venice, whose trade contacts connected the medieval republic not only with all of Europe, but also with distant countries on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.
In Italy and Germany, where the institution of free cities was formed, effective city mail became widespread. Mainz, Cologne, Nordhausen, Breslau, Augsburg, etc. had their own experienced messengers. They delivered both letters from the administration and parcels from ordinary residents who paid for the service at a certain rate.
Coachmen and troikas
Thanks to “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” by Alexander Pushkin, everyone in childhood heard the phrase: “A messenger is riding with a letter.” Domestic mail arose during the period of Kievan Rus. The need for a correspondence exchange system has always been relevant for our country due to its vast territories. The colossal distances for Western Europeans were also reflected in the norms characteristic of Russian messengers and incredible for foreigners.
During the time of Ivan the Terrible, tsarist couriers were required to travel one hundred kilometers a day, which was difficult to explain to foreign observers. In the XIII - XVIII centuries. postal stations in Russia were called yams. They kept horses and operated inns.
There was also a so-called yam duty. It extended to the draft population of the provinces. Peasants serving conscription had to organize the transportation of government officials, cargo and diplomats. This tradition was spread by the Tatar-Mongols during their yoke over the East Slavic principalities. In the 16th century, the Yamsk order appeared in the Russian state. This analogue of the ministry dealt not only with postal matters, but also with tax matters. The short phrase: “A messenger is traveling with a letter” can hardly convey the complexity of the courier business in medieval Russia.
About two hundred years ago the famous multi-gaited teams of three horses appeared. They were equipped specifically for long-distance travel. Those located on the sides galloped, and the central root moved at a trot. Thanks to this configuration, the maximum speed for its time was reached at 45-50 kilometers per hour.
From stagecoaches to railroads and steamships
Centralized systems of royal posts appeared in England, Sweden, France and other developed countries in the 16th-17th centuries. At the same time, the need for international communications grew.
At the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age, stagecoaches spread in England. This postal carriage gradually replaced simple horse-drawn couriers. Eventually it conquered the world and appeared in all parts of the world from Australia to America. The arrival of a postal carriage in a city or village was announced using a special horn.
Another turning point in the development of communication systems occurred at the beginning of the 19th century with the advent of shipping and railways. The new kind water transport has proven itself well in the organization of British-Indian mail. Especially to facilitate travel to the east, the British sponsored construction in Egypt, thanks to which ships could avoid going around Africa.
Mailboxes
There are several versions about where the first one appeared Mailbox. According to one of them, the vestibules installed in Florence at the beginning of the 16th century can be considered as such. They were placed next to churches - the main public places of the city. A wooden box with a slot at the top was intended for the transmission of anonymous denunciations that reported state crimes.
In the same 16th century, similar new items appeared among sailors. Each British and Dutch colony had its own mailbox. Using similar technology, sailors transmitted correspondence to other ships.
Renoir de Vilayer is considered the French inventor of the mailbox. It was he who resolved the problem of correspondence between Parisians. In the middle of the 17th century, there were four post offices in the French capital, but even they could not cope with the gigantic flow of correspondence from ordinary citizens. Renoir de Vilayer was a member of the government and the National Academy of Sciences. Using his own ingenuity and administrative resources (permission from King Louis XIV), in 1653 he initiated the installation of mailboxes throughout Paris, which significantly facilitated the work postal service. The novelty quickly took root in the capital and spread to other cities of the country.
The history of Russian postal services developed in such a way that domestic mailboxes appeared only in 1848. The first such wonders were installed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At first the structures were wooden, then they were replaced with metal ones. For urgent items, mailboxes painted bright orange were used.
Stamps
The international postal system that emerged in modern times had many shortcomings. The key one was that postage fees remained difficult despite any logistical and technical innovations. First this problem was decided in Great Britain. In 1840, the earliest known stamp, the “penny black,” appeared there. Its release was associated with the introduction of tariffs for sending letters.
The initiator of the creation of the brand was the politician Rowland Hill. The stamp design was engraved with the profile of the young Queen Victoria. The innovation caught on and since then each letter envelope has been equipped with a special label. Stickers appeared in other countries as well. The reform led to a significant increase in the number of postal deliveries in the UK, more than doubling in just the first year after the landmark change.
Stamps appeared in Russia in 1857. The first postage mark was valued at 10 kopecks. The stamp featured a double-headed eagle. This heraldic symbol was chosen for the circulation, since it was the emblem of the Postal Department of the empire. This department tried to keep up with Western trends. The USSR Post also paid a lot of attention; postage payment signs appeared in 1923.
Postcards
The familiar postcards arose relatively recently. The first card of this kind appeared in 1869 in Austria-Hungary. Soon this format gained pan-European popularity. This happened during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, when French soldiers began sending illustrated postcards to their families en masse.
Front-line fashion was instantly intercepted by businessmen. Within a few months, postcards began to be produced en masse in England, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. The first Russian postcard was published in 1872. Six years later, at a special congress in Paris, it was adopted international standard card sizes (9 centimeters long, 14 centimeters wide). Later it was changed several times. Over time, subtypes of postcards appeared: greeting cards, species cards, reproductions, artistic cards, advertising cards, political cards, etc.
New trends
In 1820, the envelope was invented in Great Britain. After another 30 years, stamped parcels appeared. In the mid-19th century, a letter could travel around the world in 80-85 days. Departures accelerated when the Trans-Siberian Railway opened in Russia.
The 19th century was marked by the successive appearance of the telegraph, telephone and radio. The emergence of new technologies did not diminish the importance that mail represented for the people of that time. The telegraph provided invaluable assistance to its development (in all countries the departments responsible for these two types of communications were gradually united).
In 1874, the Universal Postal Union was created and the Universal Postal Congress was convened. The purpose of the event was to sign an international agreement that could unify disparate correspondence transmission systems different countries peace. Representatives of 22 states attended the congress. They signed the Universal Postal Agreement, soon renamed the Universal Postal Convention. The document summarized the international rules for the exchange of items. Since then, the history of Russian post has continued in line with the global evolution of postal services.
At the end of the 19th century, the development of aeronautics began. Man's conquest of the air has led to the disappearance of any physical barriers to travel around the world. As mentioned above, even ancient civilizations knew their own airmail - pigeon mail. Birds were used by people for communication even at the very zenith of progress. Pigeons became especially indispensable during bloody conflicts. Feathered mail was regularly used on the fronts of the First and Second World Wars.
The modern era has many definitions. It is also called informational. And this is largely true. Today, information is the main resource driving progress. The revolution associated with it occurred thanks to the advent of the Internet and modern means of communication.
Nowadays, paper mail, familiar to many generations of people, is gradually giving way to electronic mail. The iron box for envelopes was replaced by e-mail, and social media and completely erased the idea of distance. If twenty years ago the Internet was perceived as an eccentric fun, now it is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without it. Available to every person electronic e-mail embodied the centuries-long evolution of mail with all its various leaps and bounds.
Quickly exchange information, send messages by E-mail to your friends, relatives, loved ones; instantly report something happening to you not only in text format, but also attach a photo report, warn your boss that you are again stuck in a traffic jam on the way to your favorite job, write/type a love letter to the object of your adoration - what can be easier? Today it is as simple as adding 2+2 (although some people get 5, due to late payment for the Internet service or the battery being discharged). mobile phone). About 50 years ago, it is no longer news that the development of technology has simplified the possibility of communication n number of times.
During its development, by any means, humanity has tried to convey the necessary information, mostly important, to deliver it in, so to speak, the right direction, to reach the addressee by any means.
Initially, having learned to draw, messages were “preserved” in the form of pictograms on the walls of caves, ideograms (for example, ancient Egyptian inscriptions). Note: a pictogram is when a glass is drawn and a glass is meant, an ideogram is when a glass is drawn and a glass is meant, booze, the glass industry, etc. in any grammatical form. Writing evolved from drawings. The Egyptians created syllabic writing by noticing that all words consist of a relatively small number of individual components or syllables. This gave them the idea to designate each syllable with a certain conventional image.
North American Indians used pictography before the end of the 19th century. Indians' petition to the US President:
An example of the use of pictograms in the modern world
An example of ideograms in the modern world
A truly great achievement in the cultural development of mankind was the transmission of sound language using a small number of letters. In the 15th century BC. e. The birthplace of the alphabet was the ancient state of Asia - Phenicia, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, where the paths of many civilizations crossed. The Phoenician alphabet consisted of 22 easy-to-write letters. All of them are consonants, because in the Phoenician language the main role was played by consonant sounds. To read a word, a Phoenician only had to see its backbone, consisting of consonants.
In Kievan Rus, writing was not alien since the 10th century; already in those days, not only noble people and the clergy, but also ordinary townspeople, including women, could read and write. One of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries in Russia was the discovery of several hundred birch bark letters dating from the 11th to 15th centuries. One of the most interesting finds are the letters of the boy Onfim.
Onfim began to write the alphabet, wrote the first eleven letters (upper right corner), after which he became bored and drew himself as an adult warrior piercing the enemy with a spear:
Each continent developed its own writing system. They also appeared in America. Everyone knows the unsolved mysterious hieroglyphic signs of the Mayan people.
Over the course of several thousand years, writing instruments and the material on which they wrote changed. Papyrus, parchment, and paper replaced stone and clay. It is logical that the need soon arose not only to preserve news. The letter has been written, but it is useless if it remains where it was written. It is necessary to deliver the message to the addressee, perhaps even “to the ends of the world.” The letter will be carried on horses or dogs, on trains, ships, airplanes. It will reach the most remote place, a hut in the taiga, a polar station in the Arctic or Antarctic.
Probably none of us now sending SMS, for example, is ready to wait for it to reach the recipient in a few years. In ancient times, the role of transmitter of information was assumed by a messenger, and later by a letter carrier. Being a messenger was difficult and unsafe. This is how he complained about his fate in 2300 BC. poor Egyptian messenger:
“When a messenger goes to a foreign country, he bequeaths his property to his children for fear of lions and Asians. And if he returned to Egypt, as soon as he reached the garden, as soon as he reached his house in the evening, and again he must go. The messenger lived in constant fear: if you bring bad news to your or someone else’s ruler, you will not cut off your head. It was believed that the one who brings bad news is himself to blame for the misfortune.”
In Greece, messengers were held in high esteem; in Persia, letters were passed along a chain of foot and horse messengers; Japanese messengers held bells in their hands. Wealthy patricians who owned slaves used them as their own messengers for short distances, and for longer distances they used the services of itinerant traders or travelers. Letters sent in this way often took many months to arrive, when they sometimes lost their meaning. Communication with overseas possessions was maintained through ships.
In the states of the most ancient culture of South America, there were postal couriers on the roads, whose task was to quickly deliver the orders of the ruler and transfer important news and news. The messages were oral, since the Incas did not know writing. Such messages were kept in few words in order to avoid confusion or, worse, forgetting it. It was repeated several times until the next messenger remembered it. The messenger had to have not only good physical shape, but also a good memory, and enjoy complete trust.
Postal routes were built, as a rule, running through existing trade routes; often the role of “postmen” were merchants, traders, and artisans who traveled to sell the products of their craft. This is how a well-established communication service “butchers' mail” arose. They coordinated their routes with each other and delivered letters over long distances. A kind of “butchers’ post” existed in ancient Novgorod.
The structure of the Roman post was as follows: large stations were located at a distance of a day's travel, between them there were several intermediate ones where horses could be changed. On the larger ones it was possible to spend the night, eat, and change the cart. Taxis Post, which began operating in the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” In the 10th-13th centuries, it operated on the principle of a relay race - every 15 kilometers there was an intermediate station, where a horse-drawn courier was always ready. To deliver the mail faster, the courier blew his horn as he approached. Fast and reliable communications were especially needed during the numerous wars of the empire, when urgent delivery of orders and instructions was required. In addition to the emperor and his governors, Taxis mail began to be widely used by merchants, bankers and other business people. Thanks to this truly revolutionary idea, delivery of correspondence across half of Europe took only five and a half days.
Developed under the guidance of the family postal network within a century it had spread throughout Western Europe. Until the end of the 18th century, horse-drawn couriers and Tourni-Taxis mail coaches served an area of more than 200 thousand km 2 with 13 million inhabitants.
Zemstvo mail (a large network of local post offices existed in Tsarist Russia in the 19th century), field mail, railway mail, Arctic mail, balloon mail (hot air balloons were used), airplane mail, dog sled mail, sea mail, rocket mail (in 1959 year, a rocket was launched from the US Navy submarine “Barbero”, on which a special container for mail was placed instead of a warhead; in the 90s of the last century, similar launches were carried out from Russian submarines, however, this method of mail delivery is not widely used due to its high cost. cost) and others have been and are taking place in such an important matter as the delivery of information.
Pigeon mail
For more than 5,000 years, people have been using these birds as postal messengers, which have the amazing ability to return to their native roof even from afar. Pigeon mail was known in ancient Egypt. 2000 years ago in Baghdad, such a post served the most remote corners of the state. In the Middle Ages, when numerous kingdoms, principalities, and duchies arose, pigeons began to be used again. Dovecotes appeared at courts, kings and emperors received messages from their envoys from afar.
In many cases, winged couriers successfully replaced the most advanced technical means of communication, and in in some cases were the only means of transmitting information from the front line. During the war years, more than 15 thousand pigeongrams were delivered by carrier pigeons. The speed of flight of pigeons is used by doctors at an English clinic in Plymouth. It takes 25 minutes to transport test data to the hospital by car, but pigeons manage to deliver it in just 4 minutes. And this type of communication costs much less.
Message in a bottle
In the 17th-18th centuries in England there was a position of a royal uncorker of ocean bottles with letters. Anyone else who opened the bottles on their own faced the death penalty. A note or letter placed in a bottle is entrusted to the waves of the sea if there is no other means of communication, for example, in the event of a shipwreck. This is a very unreliable method: usually up to 90% of all abandoned bottles with letters remain in the sea. Sometimes these bottles go a long way. One bottle, for example, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Ireland. It took her only 33 days to do this.
“To the village to visit grandfather”
It's no secret even for the youngest user that any email address includes certain data, has its own clear format, which is divided into two components: the name of the user himself and the domain name (this is like the street or city in which we live, and which is indicated on the envelope when sending a letter by mail). In the old days, strange addresses were far from literary fiction. Before the advent of house numbering, postmen (and senders) had a hard time. In order for the letter to fall into the right hands, the address had to be indicated with all the details - such and such a floor, a right turn, etc.
In Costa Rica, all navigation and mail correspondence is still carried out according to descriptions like “150 meters west of McDonald's” or “200 meters on the left side of the church, red house with black bars.”
N. Gogol “The Inspector General”:
K orobkin (reads the address). To his honor, dear sovereign, Ivan Vasilyevich Tryapichkin, in St. Petersburg, on Pochtamskaya street, in the house number ninety-seven, turns to the courtyard, on the third floor to the right. Well, not an address, but some kind of “reprimant”!
Deliver to the street where the church wing at the end of Lombard Street faces.” Or “Give this letter in Moscow at the Novgorod courtyard of Safesky to the house of the solicitor Bogdan Neyolov, and give it to him, without detaining or getting into the hands of Fedot Tikhanovich.
- Recently, Yugoslav archaeologists found the oldest and heaviest love letter in Iran. It was not even written on a clay tablet, as was customary in those days, but carved on a stone weighing 16 kilograms. The letter dates back to 2200 BC. Although it is indecent to read other people's letters, archaeologists have deciphered the cuneiform text. In it, the young man Gamiza asks the girl Dasbuay for a date.
- The author of the longest letter is the Iranian Hossein Mohammad Dekhani, who once received a letter from his friend reproaching him for his long silence. Dekhani sat down to write the answer and wrote it for 13 months, 4 hours a day. A detailed story about life took 150 meters of paper and weighed 2 kilograms.
- Even the Mir space station had its own post office.
- On one of the islands of the Pacific state of Vanuatu, 50 meters from the coast there is an underwater postal station. Having purchased a special waterproof envelope in advance, divers can put the letter in the mailbox or give it to the postman on duty, sitting at the counter in diving equipment. Underwater mailboxes can also be found in Japan, Malaysia, the Bahamas and other resorts.
- In the vast expanses of the United States, far from cities, you can often find arrows made of concrete 25 meters long. These are the remains of an airmail navigation system built in the 1920s, when airplanes did not yet have radio communications. Pilots had to determine coordinates using landmarks, and in bad weather and at night it was impossible to fly at all. Therefore, thousands of searchlight lighthouses equipped with autonomous generators were built between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Over time, the system lost its relevance, the towers were dismantled, and only concrete arrows serve as a reminder of its existence.
Post comes from the German word - Post, Italian - Posta, from Late Latin - Posito, which means - a station with variable horses, a station at a point.
The most ancient information about mail dates back to Assyria and Babylon. The people inhabiting these ancient countries wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets. Every schoolchild knows this information. However, the Assyrians, as early as the 3rd millennium BC, used what can be called the predecessor of the envelope. After firing the tablet with the text of the letter, it was covered with a layer of clay on which the recipient's address was written. Then the tablets were burned again. As a result of the release of water vapor during repeated firing, the “letter” plate and the “envelope” plate did not become a single piece. The “envelope” was broken and the “letter” was read. Two such letters have survived to this day. They, along with the “envelopes,” are kept in the Louvre.
4,000 years ago, an unknown Egyptian artist painted on one of the walls of the burial cave of Pharaoh Numhoten a warrior holding a scroll in one hand and an open letter in the other hand, which he hands to his superior.
This is how material evidence of the existence of mail in those distant times has reached us. We also have documentary materials about postal messages among other monuments of ancient culture.
A written message could be passed from one messenger to another without fear of the message being distorted. Carrier pigeons were also used to transport letters.
During the time of Cyrus and Darius in Persia (558 - 486 BC), postal communications were very well established. At the Persian postal stations, messengers and saddled horses were constantly ready. Mail was passed by messengers in a relay race from one to another. This was the so-called relay mail.
The ancient Roman post office was also famous. She played a huge role in governing the vast Roman Empire. In the most important centers of the empire, special stations were maintained, equipped with horse couriers. The Romans used to say “Statio posita in...” (The station is located in ...). According to experts, it was from the abbreviation of these words that the word MAIL (“Posta”) appeared.
Documented information about the emergence of mail in China dates back to very distant times. China's state postal service already existed during the Zhou Dynasty (1027 - 249 BC). She had messengers on foot and on horseback. The emperors of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 BC) already appointed postmaster generals.
China's relay mail delivered imperial orders and messages to the emperor with extraordinary speed. In an ancient Chinese engraving we can see what a Chinese foot messenger looked like. Although the work is not easy, the beloved umbrella should brighten up the difficulties of a long journey for the messenger.
In the Arab Caliphate by 750, the entire state was covered with a network of roads along which messengers plied - on foot and on horseback, camels and mules. They delivered government and private mail. The great importance of the state's postal service is evidenced by the famous statement of Caliph Mansur, who founded Baghdad (762).
“My throne rests on four pillars, and my power rests on four people: an impeccable qadi (judge), an energetic chief of police, an active minister of finance and a wise postmaster who informs me of everything.”
In Greece, the postal system was fairly well established in the form of land and sea postal communications, but it could not develop significantly due to the many city-states warring among themselves. Governments, as a rule, had at their disposal foot messengers to convey messages. They were called hemerodromes. The runners covered a distance of 55 stadia (about 10 km) in an hour and 400-500 stadia in one flight.
The most famous of these couriers was Philippides, who, according to the legend of Plutarch, in 490 BC. brought news of the victory in the Battle of Marathon to Athens and died of exhaustion. This run was the first Marathon in history. Philipides conveyed only an oral message. Already in ancient times, mounted messengers were sent to convey particularly urgent messages. As Diodorus writes, one of the military leaders of Alexander the Great kept messengers - camel riders - at his headquarters.
The Inca states in Peru and the Aztecs in Mexico had regular mail before 1500. It should be noted that the Incan and Aztec mail used only foot messengers. The fact is that horses were brought to South America by European conquerors only in the 16th century.
The distance between neighboring stations did not exceed three kilometers. Therefore, it was overcome by the messenger at a high pace. Feature The mail of the Incas and Aztecs was that, in addition to mail, messengers had to deliver fresh fish to the emperor’s table. Fish was delivered from the coast to the capital within 48 hours (500 km). Rate the speed of delivery. I think that modern mail is hardly faster, although it has cars, trains and planes at its disposal.
During the heyday of the Mayan culture, there was also a developed messenger service, but very little is known about it.
But, almost everywhere, mail, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, mail served only rulers and senior officials of the state. But for a very long time this institution had no connection with a private person. Suffice it to say that in the country of the Incas, postal routes generally bypassed populated areas.
However simple people also wanted to use mail for their own purposes. At first, their messages were transmitted privately through merchants (butchers' mail), the postal service of the knightly order, wandering monks and messengers from the university post office.
The rapid development of crafts and trade in feudal Europe forced people to organize regular postal exchanges between cities. There are documents confirming the presence of city messengers as early as the 14th century. However, the postal service of the Hanseatic League is most famous.
Hanse - a trade and political union of North German cities in the 14th - 17th centuries. With the entry into the Hanseatic League of the Rhine, the first postal network arose, which, bypassing all the borders of cities and small principalities, delivered mail throughout all territories of Germany. Further, through Nuremberg, the mail went to Italy and Venice, and through Leipzig to Prague, Vienna and other cities. In this example, we already see the beginnings of international mail.
The next notable achievement in the development of the postal service can be the postal service of the noble family of Thurn and Taxis. The first mention of the Thurn and Taxis post dates back to 1451, when Roger Taxis organized a courier line through the Tyrol and Steyermark. Further, the descendants of the Taxis house make a rapid career in the postal department.
In 1501, Franz Taxis became postmaster general of the Netherlands. Until the beginning of the 16th century, the Taxis postal service was based on the feudal privileges of the Taxis house. Since the postal business began to become profitable, Taxis mail began to have competitors. First of all, this is the city post office. In 1615, another Taxis-Lamoral became imperial postmaster general.
Moreover, by imperial decree this position was declared lifelong and hereditary for the Taxis family. By the way, the Taxis added the prefix “Turn” to their surname in 1650, receiving it as a grant from the king.
Lamoral Taxis, the new postmaster general, was forced to ask the emperor to issue a new decree against "additional posts and additional lines served by messengers." All this marked the beginning of the struggle between the Thurn and Taxis post office and its competitors. This struggle has been going on for centuries. Taxis Post managed to resist and win. Accuracy, speed and honesty - this was the motto of the Thurn and Taxis post office. It was this motto that was strictly observed in practice. For the first time, merchants and bankers, ordinary people and government officials could be sure that letters, documents, money would quickly reach the addressee, and they would soon receive an answer. All this was of great importance for society.
In 1850, Thurn and Taxis joined the German-Austrian alliance. By this time, postage stamps had already been issued in many countries. The rules of the German-Austrian Postal Union required its members to issue postage stamps.
That is why on January 1, 1852, the first Thurn and Taxis postage stamps were issued. In total, Thurn and Taxis issued 54 postage stamps. The Thurn and Taxis post office and stamped envelopes were issued.
The postal history of Thurn and Taxis only ends in 1867, when Prussia acquired the rights to all postal facilities of the house of Thurn and Taxis.
In 1973, a stamp dedicated to the Thurn and Taxis post office was issued in Belgium. Taxis' postal service was one of the first to appear in Belgium. Employees of this peculiar empire had extensive rights and privileges. One of them is reflected on the postage stamp. On the right side of the courier sitting on his horse, a postal horn is visible.
At that time, only employees of the Taxis house had the right to blow it. The sound of a horn warned postal stations about the approach of a courier, whose shift was being prepared to replace him. The sound of the horn exempted people from paying tolls, opened the city gates at night, and forced oncoming traffic to turn out of the way, giving way to a courier rushing with mail.
Hearing the sound of the horn, the shiftman prepared his horse to receive the mail and immediately move on. Messengers were required to move at a speed of at least a mile per hour. In case of violations, they were subject to fines.
In the 17th century, Sweden became a great power and there was a need for regular communication with its possessions across the Baltic Sea. The first postmen were royal couriers. The correspondence was then delivered by so-called “postal peasants.” They lived near the main roads, were exempt from various kinds of duties, for example, military, but were obliged to transport state mail.
Usually they sent a farm laborer, who ran, blowing a horn, 20-30 kilometers to a neighbor. Having handed over his mail and receiving another in exchange, he went home. If the letters were late, he faced punishment. Correspondence was also delivered by sea, for example, by boat from Sweden to the Åland Islands and further to Finland and St. Petersburg. The "postal peasants" worked all year round, regardless of the weather. The crossing was especially dangerous in spring and autumn, when they either dragged the boat across the ice, then set the sails, or took up the oars. Many people died during the storm.
Russian mail is one of the oldest in Europe. The first mention of it in chronicles dates back to the 10th century. In Kievan Rus there was a duty of the population called “cart”. This duty consisted of the need to provide horses for the prince's messengers and his servants.
Even before the Tatar-Mongol invasion, post roads and post stations existed in Russia. The invaders simply began to use them to organize their mail. They introduced a service in kind for the population, called “yam”. Yam is the responsibility of the population to provide horses and people (what kind of owner is capable of transferring his wet nurse into the wrong hands!) for the transportation of goods and mail.
The Tatar-Mongol yoke disappeared, but the Turkic word “yam” remained in the Russian language as the name of one of the many duties of the Russian population (remember the most famous ones - corvee, tithe, etc.). Postal stations where messengers changed horses began to be called pits. Since the 16th century, the pits were under the jurisdiction of the Yamsky Prikaz, the predecessor of the Russian Postal Department (1782). And the word coachman has the same roots. Although it is interesting to note that at first station keepers were called coachmen, and only later the meaning of this word changed to a modern one: a coachman is a person who directly controls the horses of postal troikas.
The hard work of the coachmen of that time is evidenced by a letter to the Novgorod voivode, boyar Prince Urusov (1684): ... Our Great Sovereign has sent a letter to you, ordering the coachmen who drive the mail lazily and carelessly, to inflict punishment, beat the batogs mercilessly, and henceforth order them to drive from pit to pit with mail with great haste, day and night, on good horses, and They would stand in the pit at the indicated hours and the coachmen themselves would drive in the queues that were chosen for that race, and they would send their workers, and would not hire anyone, and they would not stand anywhere in the pits and would not hesitate. And they were ordered to drive seven miles per hour in summer, and five miles per hour in autumn and winter, and the postmen are disobedient and do not drive at night.
A clear postal service in Russia appeared, however, only under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The organizer of the “correct” postal chase in Russia was the head of the then Russian government, boyar Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin (1605 - 1681). He is also the initiator of the creation of foreign mail in Russia (postal line Moscow - Vilna). On the postal block issued for the 100th anniversary of the Russian postage stamp, the brightest pages of the history of Russian mail are clearly visible.
As can be seen from these brief examples, the development of mail in different countries had many differences, but, in principle, the evolution of mail in different countries followed a fairly similar path. It began with the delivery of messages and orders from the powers that be, at some stage it began to serve the needs of other people. And the principles of construction are quite similar.
The history of mail develops further. Postal workers now have uniforms. Postage signs and collectors of them appear. Methods of delivering and protecting information from prying eyes are being improved. The Universal Postal Union is created. More and more new means of communication are appearing.
Since 1677, an international postal service began to operate in Russia. The first lines of public mail went beyond the borders of the Russian state to “German” countries - this is how Russian people called the lands where they spoke “dumb” languages incomprehensible to our ancestors. Besides international shipments, the “German Post” also delivered merchant letters and government papers throughout Russia. Thanks to the “German Post,” the postal service established correspondence exchange points and introduced rules to ensure regular mail delivery. It is noteworthy that what distinguished the “German post” from Western European ones was that it was a government agency, while in the West, the delivery of letters was mainly carried out by private enterprises.
The prototype of the mailbox we are used to is the Florentine vestibules - public mailboxes that were installed near the walls of churches and cathedrals; the first mailbox was installed back in the 17th century in France.
In Russia, the first mailbox appeared in St. Petersburg on December 13, 1848. Blue in color, made of one-inch boards and lined with iron, it was inconvenient to use and easy to break into, so it became a real find for postal thieves. To prevent mail theft, the authorities replaced wooden boxes with cast iron ones - weighing more than forty kilograms. And only in 1910 designer P.N. Shabarov developed an iron mailbox with a mechanically opening bottom door, which we still use today.
No, it was not in vain that Champollion fought over. Discovering their secrets has given scientists an excellent opportunity to penetrate into the past. By rolling out papyrus scrolls, historians learned more and more about the life and customs of Ancient Egypt. It is not surprising that among the hundreds of papyri that have survived to this day, there was a scroll that described the hard work of ancient postmen. This papyrus was a will written twenty-four centuries ago. The father, dying, instructed his son: “Become whatever you want, but not a postman.”
“Before leaving for foreign countries, he,” we read about the messenger in this will, - out of fear of being eaten by animals or killed by wild Asians, he bequeaths all his property to his children. How is life for him in Egypt? As soon as he returned home, he soon had to get ready to travel again. Then, if he goes somewhere, then he always has a heavy burden on him..."
The winner of sports games - olimlioiik - Not only rode in the chariot of honor. The best runners received the honorable right to deliver news.
The burden was heavy and dangerous. And not only because there were wild animals on the roads. The fate of the messenger often depended on the contents of the letter. The news of joy promised a reward, the sad news - death. They say that the Persian kings without regret killed messengers who brought unkind messages.
Still, good or bad news had value. They are the only source of information for ancient statesmen. That is why, when describing one of the kings, the historian Diodorus Siculus emphasized: “As soon as he got up at dawn, he immediately received letters from messengers who had arrived from different directions.”
Messengers of Greece
No, it was not without reason that the unknown Egyptian implored his son not to become a messenger. In Egypt it was hard, dangerous service. Ancient Greece was a different matter. There, the messengers were given unprecedented honors...
Dressed in purple clothes, the Olympian, winner of the Olympic Games, rode a chariot into his hometown to the cheers of his admirers. And no one was surprised that such people were given lifelong pensions, their sculptural images were installed in public places, or... They did hemerodromes- messengers for the fastest, most important messages. The glory of one of these miracle runners has survived to this day.
History of marathon running
More than two thousand years ago, a hundred thousand Persian army landed near Athens, in the Marathon Valley. The Athenians could oppose the uninvited guests with only ten thousand soldiers. The future battle seemed to the Persians to be something like a game of cat and mouse.
But the Persians were invaders, while the Greeks defended freedom. This increased their strength tenfold. Win or die. Athens did not see any other outcome, and did not want to see it.
The Athenians found themselves alone. Their hemerodrome Pheidippides showed miracles of speed and reached Sparta in two days. But the Spartans refused to help the Athenians. They preferred to wait and see how events unfold. There was only one thing left to do - fight!
The experienced commander Miltiades, who knew the habits of the Persians well, led the Athenian army. On September 12, 490 BC, his army rushed to attack the enemy...
Dusty and bloody, the messenger Miltiades came running to quiet Athens.
Rejoice, we won! - he shouted and died.
Reminds me of the hero-messenger marathon running, one of the most difficult athletics competitions. Marathon runners run forty-two kilometers, one hundred and ninety-five meters. The same distance separated Athens from the battlefield.
The story of the Marathon Messenger is a testament to the strength and weakness of the ancient Greek connection. Respecting the messenger who gave his life to deliver the news, one cannot help but think about the limit of human endurance. The marathon distance was considered close to this limit. But recently reports appeared in the press refuting this widespread opinion. It turned out that Indians from the Taragumara tribe, living in the Sierra Madre mountains, in northwestern Mexico, regularly organize running competitions for... 270 kilometers! But even such an unheard of long distance could not solve the problems of communication in the great powers of antiquity...
Messengers of Persia
About a hundred years before the Marathon battle, the Persians conquered Assyria. The Persian king Cyrus (historians usually call him Cyrus the Elder) became the ruler of an empire that stretched from the Persian Gulf to the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean...
To manage a multinational slave state, you needed an excellent connection, and Cyrus had this connection.
“Nothing in the world can compete with them in speed; doves and cranes can barely keep up with them,” the Greek historian Xenophon wrote about Cyrus’s messengers.
Military and trade routes, built by the hands of slaves, stretched to different directions Persian power. But not immaculate roads - main feature Kira mail.
A monument was erected to the Marathon messenger in Greece. You can see a fragment of it on this stamp.
“We noticed another useful discovery, dictated by the size of his state,” wrote the same Xenophon. “Thanks to him, he learned about the state of affairs from everywhere, from the farthest corners of the state. Having found out how far a horse could travel in a day's journey, he founded shelter stations in all directions at such a distance, leaving the horses there along with the attendants. Later, he appointed overseers here who received the delivered letters in order to pass them on, replacing the exhausted people and horses. They say that the transportation of letters did not stop at night, since daytime messengers handed over letters to night messengers...” In short: the ancient Persians organized relay mail in their state.
To this characteristic Angarion(postal service of Ancient Persia), which was given by Xenophon, we can add only one thing - the postal service was considered a matter of great national importance. And it is no coincidence that for some time Cyrus’s postmaster was his nephew, the future king Darius. The same Darius who tried to conquer the Scythians and lost the marathon battle to the Athenians.
“My throne rests on four pillars, and my power rests on four people: an impeccable qadi (judge), an energetic chief of police, an active minister of finance and a wise postmaster who informs me of everything.”. These words belong to Caliph Abu Jefar Mansur, the Baghdad caliph who ruled in the 8th century.
However, the importance postal service rulers who lived long before Mansur understood perfectly well how to control their possessions and communicate with strangers.
Ancient Egypt Post
It is known that already in the 3rd millennium BC. the Egyptian pharaohs had a completely organized messenger service- both on foot and on horseback. Thanks to them, the ruler could transmit his commands to the farthest corners of the country, communicate with his fellow competitors, and also receive necessary information about what is happening outside the capital. Messengers were the first to inform the pharaoh of riots or invasion of enemy troops.
How honorable the work of the walker was is unknown, but there were plenty of dangers, so before leaving on a long journey, the messenger necessarily bequeathed his property to his children - you never know...
Inca Postal Service
There were also walkers on the other side of the globe - primarily in the kingdom of the Great Inca. Indian postal service was called "chaski", and the messengers were divided into two categories: atun-chaski And churo-chasky. The former served and obeyed exclusively the supreme ruler, and the latter transmitted parcels and reports from everyone else.
Before the arrival of the pale-faced Indians, they did not know horses, and you couldn’t ride quickly on llamas. Therefore, the messengers traveled exclusively on foot. Although the Incas had roads, the mountainous terrain made it difficult to run long and fast along them. Therefore, there were checkpoints every 2-5 km. Out of breath on them messengers We waited for fresh hours to pick up a message or parcel and continue on our way. It is known that the five hundred kilometer road along which fish was delivered from the coast to the capital was covered in about two days.
If the assignment did not tolerate the slightest delay, the chaska announced his approach to the chukla by blowing a special horn. There were also rituals when delivering a message. If it was joyful, red ribbons were woven into the hair and a dagger was waved. But sad ones were recommended to be conveyed quietly, kneeling before the Great Inca.
Their messengers The Incas have been cooking since childhood. Training and strict punishments made chaskas hardy and resilient. The secrecy of correspondence was maintained very strictly.
Cieza de Leon, Chronicle of Peru:
“...those who lived at the postal stations conducted their affairs in such strict secrecy that, neither by request nor by threat, they never talked about what they were going to convey in the message, even if the notification had already gone further.”
True, messengers rarely lived to old age: after all, jogging in the morning is one thing, and racing at the limit of strength is another.
Nordic Post
As for the northern peoples, they have developed a very specific postal system - nomadic. For example, a northern aborigine is riding on a reindeer sled, and on the way he meets another. If the oncoming person was traveling in the required direction, then a message was conveyed to him. If a feather was attached to the message, it meant: trouble has happened, drive the deer at full speed. And God forbid you attach this urgent “postage stamp” to an ordinary message - not a single decent person will communicate with you later.
Postal service of ancient Greece
Unlike Egypt and the Inca Empire, Ancient Greece was a kind of conglomerate of sovereign city-states (polises). Therefore, centralized regular postal service they didn't have. Each policy contained its own walkers, who were called " hemerodromes"("day messengers"). It is known that in an hour the hemerodrome could run 55 stages (about 10 km). It is not surprising that many messengers became winners of the ancient Olympics, and vice versa - Olympic medal-winning runners were hired to work as messengers.
Persian Post
But the eternal enemies of the ancient Greeks - the Persians - have regular postal service "hangarion"was established much better - largely thanks to King Cyrus II (VI century BC).
Efficiency Persian Post was determined by two conditions. The first was a well-equipped network of roads that led from the capital to the outskirts of Persia. The second is the presence on these roads postal stations with their managers. Usually the stations were distant from each other within a day's distance of a horse's run, and it was there that the messengers rested and changed horses.
The most important roads of the Persian kingdom.
For example, on the so-called "Tsar's Road" with a length of 2,500 km, there were 111 stations. And if a foot messenger could cover such a route in 90 days, then horsemen covered it in literally 6-8 days. The postal relay was actually around the clock - the message of the day messenger was immediately picked up at the station by the night messenger.
Similar system postal service the Romans would later create and improve them, but we will talk about them in a separate article.
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