The history of papyrus
It goes back to the beginning of human civilization, when the need to transfer knowledge from one generation to another emerged, and this required creating a storehouse for this knowledge that is easy to control and preserve from loss. The first of these stores after clay tablets, wood and stone engraving was papyrus.
This paper is made from the papyrus plant, a plant that was abundant in the forests of the Nile Delta and in the Nile Valley in general, but it has become rare today. The plant grows in shallow fresh water and in moist delta soils. Its stems reach up to 5 meters in length, which end at the top with small brown flowers that often bear fruit.
The people of the region used to feed on this plant, but after they found other uses for it, they cultivated it in farms, and they continued to harvest and invest it until its rate decreased. Papyrus was cultivated in the pre-dynastic era in Egypt (6000-3150 BC), and it continued during the Ptolemaic era (323-30 BC) and into the Roman period (30 BC-640 AD). The name of the Egyptian papyrus was associated with writing so that the word paper in English is actually derived from the word papyrus.
The oldest papyrus document that was discovered dates back 4,500 years ago, and although papyrus does not work well in a humid environment, it was widely distributed and was used in Rome and Greece until the eleventh century.
Papyrus plant
Where did the name papyrus come from?
The name of the plant in Greek, papyrus, is probably derived from the Egyptian word papuro, which means royal or pharaonic, because the government controlled the papyrus industry because of its control over the lands and later on the papyrus plantations. It had several other designations such as wadj, which signify freshness and freshness, and after being picked and manufactured in rolls, it is called djema, which means clean, as it is then ready to be written.
Manufacturing process
To this day, we are not entirely sure about how the ancient Egyptians used to make papyrus. The most accurate description of the process is found in Pliny's book of natural history, and although its description is accurate, some of the concepts are not connected with what was found in the remains of ancient documents, in addition to that Pliny never went to Egypt, so it is unlikely that he surrounded the manufacturing process in a way. Whole. Despite the lack of documents, we are sure of some steps that were taking place during the manufacturing process.
The farmers used to pick the sedge plant from the swamps by cutting it from the bottom with sharp blades, then they would gather the stems of the plant in bundles and put it in the means of transport that took it to the places of manufacture, and there the stems were cut into thin strips, and placed side by side with each other vertically. After that, a preparation extracted from plant gum is applied to it, then another layer of strips is placed on it horizontally, then the two layers are pressed together and left to dry.
Manufacture of papyrus
The side whose lines are horizontal is called the right side, which is the preferred side for writing, and the second side for the left side, but both sides were used for writing most often. After that, the papers are collected together to form scrolls or manuscripts, as the regular manuscript consists of 20 pages, and it is most often wrapped around a wooden stick, but it is sometimes designed so that the number of pages is as per request. After the scrolls were collected, they were transported to temples, government buildings, markets, or exported, as this light of papyrus was not only dominant in Egypt, but was exported in large quantities to Europe, where this type became rooted in the civilization of the Romans and Greece.
Although papyrus was used for writing, it was only intended for religious and governmental texts due to the high cost of manufacturing it, as in addition to the cost of manual labor, it needed skilled workers and specialists not to destroy the plant during its manufacture. All the papyrus that was discovered was from temples, government buildings, or the holdings of the wealthy. 2.
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Uses of papyrusAncient Egyptian writers would spend years perfecting the craft of writing, and even if they were wealthy, they were not allowed to waste papyrus during their learning stage. The cheapest and most popular option for writing was on porcelain or wood panels, especially for students, as they used to use them for training, and they were not allowed to use papyrus until after they mastered the arts of writing. I found many duplicate papyrus texts on training boards, which helped complete some missing phrases and words from the main texts.
He used papyrus to write hymns, religious and spiritual texts, correspondence, official documents, love poems, medical texts, scientific manuals and literary texts.
Papyrus texts vary in size from small pieces to a page or pages to the famous Ebers Papyrus, consisting of 110 pages, and reaching a length of 20 meters, it is a medical text, and is considered evidence of the association of medicine with magic in ancient Egypt.
The ancient Egyptians used black ink for writing, in addition to red which was used either to write the names of demons or evil spirits, mark the beginning of a new syllable, marking a word or syllable, or punctuation in some cases. The book carried wooden cases with black and red paint and water bottles to make ink, and the pen was a reed with a soft end, and was replaced in the third century BC by ballpoint pens, which were a stiffer reed with a sharper end. The writer used to write on the right page of the papyrus manuscript, and after it finished, he moved to the left. There were also some manuscripts that contained texts on the right page only, and these were used by some writers to write on the left page, where they either wrote on them a topic that was complementary to the right text or completely different from it.
In addition to writing, the Egyptians used the papyrus plant for other purposes as well, as it was considered a food, as mentioned before, and in making clothes, shoes, baskets, curtains, dolls, and even for making small fishing boats.
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