What is parchment made from?

Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs and young calves.

It may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between "parchment" and the more restricted term "vellum".

The word parchment evolved (via the Latin pergamenum and the French parchemin) from the name of the city of Pergamon which was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period. The city so dominated the trade that a legend later arose which said that parchment had been invented in Pergamon to replace the use of papyrus which had become monopolized by the rival city of Alexandria. This account, originating in the writings of Pliny the Elder (Natural History, Book XII, 69–70), is dubious because parchment had been in use in Anatolia and elsewhere long before the rise of Pergamon.