THE PAPYRUS AND ITS ORIGINS
by
Francesca Jourdan

© 1999, Francesca Jourdan

In use for over 41 centuries, papyrus has made its mark in an indissoluble manner to the history of humankind, from at least the third millennium BC to the eleventh century AD. Known more correctly as Cyperus papyrus L.[1] it is the most well known of 4000 species of the Cyperaceae, a family of herbaceous plants found throughout the world, especially in the swampy and marshy areas of temperate regions.

            Papyrus has a long principal rhizome (root stalk) with its roots descending vertically.  In certain conditions, its stems can reach a height of 6 meters (19.68ft) and a diameter of 10cm (3.9in).  The stem consists of long fibers forming a stalk (inflorescence), which, when closed, takes the form of a high goblet. This, when open, becomes a large umbrella comprised of subtle stems.  Small triangular leaves surround the rhizome[2].  The elegance of the plant is not just in its structure but also in its colors: from the particularly intense emerald green of its stem to the straw-yellow of its umbrella, becoming reddish in the stamens.

            The date at which the Greeks began to use papyrus paper is unknown, but it is thought to have been during the VII century AD.  Nor is it known when it arrived for the first time in Rome, where the ‘liber’ replaced it[3].  It seems to have been prior to 273 BC, year during which Ptolemy II Philadelphus intensified his relationships with Rome.  It is generally believed that the Romans learnt of papyrus paper through Magna Grecia.

            It was wrongly thought that Egypt was the only producer of papyri paper.  In reality it was produced elsewhere, in Syria for example.  The making of the material did not necessarily have to take place where the plant grew; even in Egypt stems coming from other countries could be used.  Egypt was the producer par excellence in the ancient world of the papyrus and paper, due to the face that the plant grew in large quantities, both in the Delta and along the Nile.  In the Egyptian language, the paper was called djet or tjufi,[4]; such a figure was also used as a determinative of the name Ta-mehu, ‘Nile Delta’ or ‘Lower Egypt’[5].  The plant was called uag, word transcribed with the figure of the same plant; the term also meant ‘green, fresh, prosper’ and ‘column in papyrus shape’.

            In Greek, at least in the VI-V century BC, the plant was called byblos, which meant ‘written roll of papyrus’, ‘book’, and in its plural form, ‘papers, pieces of papyrus’.  Starting from the IV century BC, the plant was also named papyros.  It seems however that this last term indicated the plant in relation to its capacity to produce material destined as alimentation, while byblos seemed to designate the same source of bark and fiber which paper and other objects of daily use were made from.  Romans called the plant papyrus or papyrum, an expression which stood for ‘paper’ to write[6].

            In ancient times, the papyrus grew in abundance in Egypt, in the coastal regions of Ethiopia, along the Niger river, near the Tiberiade lake in Palestine, and along the Euphrates near Babylon.  Today the plant grows in many areas of tropical Africa, on the coasts of rivers or lakes: it can be found along the lakes in Chad, in Ethiopia, and by the Victoria and Tanganyika lakes and along the high Nile of Uganda and Sudan[7].

            According to Corrado Basile, founder of the ‘Museo del Papiro’ of Syracuse, papyrus originated in zones of fluvial basins.  As a natural species, it disappeared from Egypt between 1055 and 1061, due to the Nile waters being hit heavily by a disastrous drought[8].  The saline degree in lakes along which it grew became particularly high: the plant, salt being one of its main enemies disappeared completely in the space of a few short years.  Consequently, the work of writing paper was abandoned.  In Egypt, it had totally vanished following the Napoleonic expedition (1798-1801).  Today it is cultivated in Cairo at the Institute directed by Hassan Ragab, to satisfy the tourists’ demand[9].

            Papyrus at its natural state can only be found in two areas of the Mediterranean: at Fiumefreddo, near Catania in Italy and in the Valley of the Jordanian[10].  Although it is generally thought that the plant first appeared in Sicily in the third century BC from Ptolemaic Egypt, until now at least, relative testimonials to its presence on the island in ancient times has been difficult to find. One particular document dates from 599 AD in Palermo.  The Arab writer Abu Bakir Abdallah gives another testimonial of the plant in Palermo dating to the '900s.

            In the Syracuse area, papyrus, which was called pappera, and, more commonly, parrucca [11] (from its umbrella which recalls a wig), was pointed out for the first time in 1674 by Paolo Silvio Boccone[12], who noted it in a peninsula of the area.  Nowadays it grows for cultivation along the Cyan river, located in Pantano Magno[13].

            The oldest source which mentions papyrus along the Cyan goes back to 1760, when the historian-archeologist Cesare Gaetani della Torre identified it on the river banks[14].  In any case, it is very probable that it grew before that period, but that nobody had identified it as the Nile’s plant[15].  In the 1700s, the Cyan papyrus was one of the major attractions of foreign travelers in Sicily.  The indiscriminate cut of the stems worked by the farm workers, who used it among other things as a fodder to attach straw, already in those times jeopardized the plant’s existence.

            In 1780, the philologist-archeologist Saverio Landolina Nava[16], who studied the antique techniques of the making of papyrus paper, asked and obtained from King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon permission for it to be put under protection. The King of Naples, glory accorded him by the ownership of a collection of famous papyri (discovered between 1752 and 1754 in Villa dei Pisoni), named the same man, Landolina, superintendent for the safeguard of the plant.

            Nevertheless, in the last two centuries, interventions for improving the area of the Sicilian papyrus to avoid floods on the lands of the Cyan river, works for enlarging the river stream, withdrawals of water samples for industrial purposes, etc. have constantly altered the fragile ecosystem which constitutes the ideal environment for the growth of papyrus[17].  The reclamation of the area of Pantano Magno, started in 1885, drained the swamps, ending the spontaneity of the papyrus along the Cyan: from that moment on, it was necessary for the  plant to be transplanted.

            Today the conditions are far from ideal.  Since 1984 the Cyan and its papyri have been part of a natural reserve, which the Regional Province of Syracuse should be safeguarding: since 1974, an undiscriminatory withdrawal of the river waters for industrial and farming purposes has resulted in continuous modifications of the land level; with the excessive level of salt in these waters, owing to the progressive penetration of sea water, these withdrawals irreparably damages the plant hastening its disappearance. Many times, Corrado Basile, director of the ‘Museo del Papiro’ in Syracuse, has courageously denounced the risks that the river is facing with its plants, proposing possible remedies[18].

            Founded in 1989, the ‘Museo del Papiro’ of Syracuse[19] is an institution which consists of research activity on the papyrus plant, on its transformation into a writing support and on the restoration of antique papyri.  Thanks to forty years of study on Egyptian and Sicilian plants and on papyri from pharaonic to Byzantine times, it is now possible to reconstruct the techniques used for its making.  Basile is capable of replicating identical antique papyrus by singling out and making the indispensable white color[20], used in Egypt to assure the preservation in time of the papyrus papers and from insect attack.

            The papyrus stem was considered edible[21].  Herodotus, who visited Egypt from 449 to 430 BC, confirmed that the aborigines, after having cut the superior part of the stem (used for other purposes) would eat the inferior part (roughly one cubit [18in, 46cm] in length), maintaining that the best way to prepare it was in a burning oven[22].  However, it could also be eaten raw or boiled[23].  In any case, its juice was sucked and its pulp spitted, a custom mentioned by Aristophanes in a famous passage of the Frogs. By playing with the double meaning of the word byblos,[24] referring both to the plant and the book, he ridiculed Euripides, who sucked the juice from the books as the Egyptians did from papyrus.

            The lack of wood, always affecting the Egyptian economy, made more precious the papyrus root, which the Egyptians used as alimentation and for making utensils.  Pliny the Elder described other uses of the plant from which, both in pharaonic and Graeco-Roman times, boats, sails, mats, clothes, covers, cords, and ‘many other things’ were made[25].  One typical object of daily life was the basket: in fact, according to the Old Testament, little Moses was left in the Nile waters inside a papyrus basket.  Many diverse samples of baskets, mats and shoes made with the plant have survived, and date back as far as the pharaonic era.  According to Herodotus, the Egyptian priests could only wear linen clothing and papyrus shoes; a papyrus mat was the ritual cover of the tabernacle of the god Osiris.  The plant was often represented in the hands of goddesses, as a symbol of eternal freshness; the papyrus was often reproduced in the daily life scenes painted on tomb walls.

            In the Greek world, there are diverse testimonials of papyri cords.  Herodotus mentions that the cords Serse used to build a bridge were made of papyri while, according to Pliny the Elder, Antigono Monoftalmo (381-301 BC) used only ropes of papyrus for naval equipment.

            In Egypt, already in ancient times, embarkations of small dimensions were made out of the stems of the plant, tied together.  The small embarkations were used for picking papyri, hunting and fishing and fishing (according to wall paintings), whereas the large ones were destined for the transportation of heavy weights and for long trips.

            Light and beneficial for the minimum draught, small embarkations were an ideal means of transport in the extended Nile canals.  The relief of Kom Ombo depicting Ptolemy III Evergete is famous: he stands on an elegant papyrus raft in a swamp rich of plants and birds.  Egyptian literature gives us testimonials of diverse papyri embarkations.  One can remember the exploits of the Norwegian Thor Heyerdhal, who with his two papyri boats Ra I e Ra II managed to cross the Atlantic.

            Most people in Egypt continuously used the plant; yet its most important use was the making of writing paper, whose labor was costly.  The Hymn to Hapy, composed around 2025-1700 BC, states the origin of this writing support: “All hieroglyphic writing is the work of the flood, from the moment that they are made of rushes”[26].  As already pointed out, the making of the papyrus paper in Egypt goes back to at least 3000 BC.  A non-used roll of papyrus, to be used by the dead, was found in the Saqqara necropolis, inside the tomb of the high functionary Hemaka, dating it to 3035 BC[27].  The most ancient papyri written in Egyptian are fragments of accounting books, discovered in a temple at el-Gebelein, from the reign of King Neferirkara of the V Dynasty (2500 BC)[28].

            One source for the knowledge of ancient technique of making the papyrus paper illustrates, so to say, the first phase of the process.  It is a color relief conserved on the wall of a Theban tomb, that of Puyemra, which goes back to the XVIII dynasty (1400 BC): it depicts three successive moments of the picking and the preparations of the plant’s stems.

            To the left is an embarkation, on which stand several men: one, stretching out to the prow, pulls the stems up from the roots; a second man, in the boat -controlled by a third man-, ties them in strips; to the right of the relief, on the shore, a fourth man carries a strip of stems on his back, in order to hand it over to a fifth person, who, sitting on a bench, is pealing the stems, deprived of their inflorescence[29].

            A description of Pliny the Elder illustrates the successive phases of its manufacture: from paragraphs 74-82 of book XIII in Natural History[30], it is possible to draw out the technique adopted in that time[31].  The stem of the plant was cut with a knife from top to bottom into long strips (philyrae), a few centimeters large and a dozen long.  These were placed side by side and other strips laid across them at right angles.  Then the two layers were placed together and the whole sheet (schida) dried and pressed[32]: together they became a perfectly resistant paper (plagula, in Latin; kollema, in Greek).

            Therefore, in the making of the paper, there was no need for glue[33]: the inside of the plant contains a glutinous substance, which under pressure makes the strips stick together.  Glue, made with flour, was used to unite to one another a certain number of papers in order to form a roll (charta, volumen, in Latin; chartes, tomos, in Greek).

            The inevitable harshness of the area was eliminated with a hammer or weight[34], or with the tusk of an elephant or a boar: the more the paper was smooth, the easier the brush ran on the paper.  The brush was the instrument used to write on papyrus.  It had, in pharaonic times, a soft and frayed end, like a paintbrush, and in Greek and Roman times, a hard and acute end.

Papyrus paper darkened with the passing of time, attacked by insects and deteriorated because of humidity[35].  For this, before being put on the market, it was treated with a series of substances, only recently singled out, which had the function of maintaining the paper uniformly clear. Contemporarily, resin and oil resin were used to preserve paper from a high risk of humidity or insects, and to pigment the fibers.

Contrarily to what was thought, once written, the papyrus could be rolled up on itself[36].  Only in a few cases, in Greek and Roman times, when the roll was of medium-high height, in order to preserve the delicate papyri fibers, avoiding their continuous contact, it was rolled up around a rod (umbilicus, in Latin; omphalòs, in Greek) of wood, bone or even, in luxurious samples, gold.  In Greek and Roman times, the roll could be preserved preciously, by putting around it a cover of parchment red- or yellow-colored with animal or vegetal substances.

  Pliny enumerates eighth types of papyri paper[37]: Augusta, Livia, hieratica, amphitheatrica, Fanniana, Saitica, Taeneotica, emporetica; their height varied from 24 cm for the Augusta to 11 cm for the emporetica.  The finest and most precious paper was the hieratica (or regia); in Roman times, the supremacy passed to Augusta (named after Ottaviano Augusto) and to Livia.  Less precious of all was the amphitheatrica, made in the vicinity of the amphitheater of Alexandria.  In Rome, a certain Fanio managed to rework it, obtaining a more subtle and better paper, called charta Fanniana.  The emporetica was used to roll up merchandise[38].

  The most precious papyri paper was that which, finely structured, presented itself particularly subtle, smooth, consistent and white.  The paper made in pharaonic times was certainly better than that of Greek and Roman epoch.  Over time, the technique of its fabrication became less sophisticated and masterly, as is evidenced by the paper becoming thicker.  So much so that, after the third century AD, it resembled cardboard[39].

  If hieroglyphic writing had only a limited propagation outside of Egypt, it cannot be said the same for its particular technique.  Two diverse methods were found since the invention of writing: that of Mesopotamians which consisted in engraving on argile; and that of Egyptians, with their tracing of ink on papyrus - the only one surviving.  Writing on papyrus is one of the important inheritance left us from Ancient Egypt.  Our paper and pens are only the modern writing utensils the Egyptian scribe used.  Many occidental languages have kept a trace of this.  In most of them, doesn’t the word designating ‘paper’ derive directly from the Egyptian paper-aâ, papyrus?