## History of papyrus Papyrus is the writing surface ancient Egypt made from *Cyperus papyrus*, a tall sedge that grew thickly in the marshes of the Nile Delta. It isn't paper in the strict sense — paper is made from fibres broken down into a pulp and reformed into a sheet, while papyrus is the plant's own pith laid down and pressed — but it's the ancestor of the word: *papyrus* came into English via Latin from the Greek *pápyros*. Greek also called it *byblos*, possibly after the Phoenician port of Byblos, which is where *bible* and *bibliography* come from. It goes back a very long way. A blank roll found in the Early Dynastic tomb of Hemaka at Saqqara dates to around 3000 BCE, and the oldest papyri with writing on them — the "Diary of Merer," found at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea coast in 2013 — are logbooks from a crew hauling limestone for the Great Pyramid of Giza, around 2560 BCE. ### How it was made - Cut the stems into sections and strip off the green outer rind - Slice the white inner pith into long, thin strips - Lay one layer of strips side by side, then a second layer on top at right angles - Press or hammer the layers together while still wet — the plant's own sap helps bond them, no glue needed within the sheet - Dry under pressure, then polish smooth with a stone or shell Individual sheets were then pasted edge to edge with a starch paste to make rolls. The side with horizontal fibres (the recto) was the natural writing side; the vertical-fibre back (the verso) was often reused later. ### Spread and decline Egypt held a near-monopoly and exported papyrus across the Mediterranean, and the Greek and Roman worlds wrote on it for centuries — scrolls, letters, accounts, contracts. Much of what survives does so only because Egypt's dry climate preserved it; elsewhere it rotted. Parchment gradually took over. It was tougher, could be made anywhere livestock was kept, and worked well on both sides, which suited the codex (the bound book) better than the scroll. By the early 4th century CE the most important books were being made on parchment, though papyrus hung on for documents. Its last known use in Europe was a papal document of 1057, by which point paper — arriving via the Islamic world from China — was taking over. ### Revival Papyrus-making died out entirely, and the plant itself largely disappeared from Egypt. In 1962 an Egyptian engineer, Hassan Ragab, worked out a method of making it again from plants that had been reintroduced to Egypt from France in 1872. Most papyrus made today is sold to tourists in Egypt, with a smaller tradition in Sicily, where the plant also grows. See [[Tomoe River paper]] for a very different (and much thinner) paper story, and [[Analogue/Analogue|Analogue]] for the rest. Sources: [Papyrus — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus), [Cyperus papyrus — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_papyrus), [Bridget Leach, "Papyrus Manufacture" — UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology](https://escholarship.org/content/qt5n53q5fc/qt5n53q5fc_noSplash_58117bc741b9a5e79b1c6c778c64b99f.pdf?t=rzuead), [History of paper — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper)