Papyrus

“ At night, when the moon is at the full, the enchantment is even more potent As she rises above the mists, a soft golden light is diffused all around, and against the radiancy of this glow the reeds and tall grasses stand out in strong and dark relief, each delicate thread of the papyrus fronds being distinctly traceable. To add to the magical effect, glittering points of light like tiny stars flit about in all directions through the reeds, marking the path of the fireflies, and deepening the gloom of the background. ”

“ I had to confess that after hearing the contents of this so-called explanatory papyrus I was more perplexed than before.
“You don’t understand this, do you, old Mark?” resumed Hugh, “any more than my father did; but the whole thing seemed so enigmatical to him, and yet so real, so strange, that he looked round him eagerly for a solution. One by one he opened each of the other three canopic jars, and it was in the last one that he found the priceless papyrus, of a date some three thousand years previous to the existence of the scribe in whose tomb it rested. ”

“ PAPYRUS The commonest material upon which to write the records of history and all literature for some centuries, both before and after the time of Christ, was that manufactured from the papyrus plant, or reed, which grew in great abundance in the stagnant pools occasioned by the annual overflow of the Nile;—it grew also in the marshes of the Euphrates, and elsewhere, though for centuries the only source of the papyrus for literature was in Egypt. ”

“ Under an almost rainless sky, where frost is unknown, and the sand seals up all that is entrusted to its keeping, nothing perishes except by the hand of man. The fragile papyrus, inscribed it may be 5,000 years ago, is as fresh and legible as when its first possessor died. ”

“ The oldest manuscript in existence, however, is on papyrus, which, as is well known, was the chief writing-material of the ancient world. Although the discovery that skins of animals, when properly prepared, formed a convenient and durable writing-material, was made at a very early date, the papyrus held its own as the writing-material of literary Egypt, Greece, and Rome, until about the fourth or fifth century of our era. ”

“ Here the papyrus grows luxuriantly among flags and castor-oil plants. It was sent from Egypt by Ptolemy to King Hieron II., and has flourished ever since. Struggling up the narrow stream and through the choking mass of vegetation, which threatened to close the passage altogether, our travellers' boat at last arrived at a beautiful circular basin, fringed with papyrus and purple iris ”

“ It was from the name by which they called the papyrus, βύβλος or βίβλος, that the Greeks formed βιβλίον, their word for a book, the plural of which (mistaken for a feminine singular) has given us our own word Bible. In the 2nd century B.C. Eumenes II., king of Pergamus, finding papyrus hard to procure, introduced improvements into the preparations of the skins of sheep and calves for writing purposes, and was rewarded by the name of his kingdom being preserved in the word pergamentum, whence our “parchment,” by which the dressed material is known. ”

“ As metal is not likely to have been employed by the primitive scribes of Chaldæa, and there is no trace of stone having been used—even the stone cylinder of later days being called a dup-sar or “written tablet”—we are left to choose between wood and papyrus. In favour of papyrus is the fact that the circular forms of so many of the pictures suggest that they were originally painted rather than engraved; on the other hand, it is doubtful whether the papyrus grows in the Babylonian rivers, or at any rate did so in the prehistoric age. ”

“ Kāra drew a box from its niche and set it upon the granite slab beside his lamp. Then he took from it a roll of papyrus, which he examined with interest.{56}
Yes; he had read it before. It was one of those so often mysteriously produced by his grandmother to assist in his education. He examined another roll, and a third, leisurely and with care. These also he knew well. There were two hundred and eighteen rolls of papyrus in this ancient library, and the knowledge they contained had all been absorbed by the young Egyptian years before. ”

“ In the recesses of the desolate Libyan mountains that lie behind the temple and city of Abydus, the supposed burying place of the holy Osiris, a tomb was recently discovered, among the contents of which were the papyrus rolls whereupon this history is written. ”

“ The real facts in respect to this matter are, that the introduction of the use of papyrus to nations beyond the limits of Egypt was an event that did not take place until after the reign of the first Macedonian sovereign of Egypt, Ptolemy Lagus (B. C. 323) when, in return for Greek literature, Egypt gave back her papyrus. Before this epoch the Greeks had been in the habit of employing such materials as linen, wax, bark and leaves for ordinary writing purposes, while their public records were inscribed on stone, brass, lead or other metals. ”

“ The fact that papyrus rather than parchment was the material adopted by authors during the fruitful period of Latin literature, had of course an important bearing in the continued existence of their works, for papyrus was an extremely perishable substance. Damp, worms, moths, mice, were all deadly enemies of papyrus rolls, but even if, through persistent watchfulness, these were guarded against, the mere handling of the rolls, even by the most careful readers, brought them rapidly to destruction. ”

“ All other stays are like that one to which the prophet compares the King of Egypt—the papyrus reed in the Nile stream, on which, if a man leans, it will break into splinters which will go into his flesh, and make a poisoned wound. ”

“ At his feet sits a woman—for the Greek lady never reclined at table. In addition to these two figures a horse's head, a dog, or a serpent may sometimes be seen; and these forms comprise the almost invariable pattern of all grave reliefs. Now, that this was the real model from which the figures on the papyrus were taken I could not doubt, when I considered the seemingly absurd fidelity with which in each murder the papyrus, smeared with honey, was placed under the tongue of the victim. ”

“ The ritual then of the murderers was a Greek ritual, their cult a Greek cult—preferably, perhaps, a South Greek one, a Spartan one, for it was here that the highly conservative peoples of that region clung longest and fondliest to this semi-barbarous worship. This then being so, I was made all the more certain of my conjecture that the central figures on the papyrus were drawn from a Greek model. ”

“ Some years ago I was informed, while at Alexandria, that a papyrus had been discovered in Upper Egypt, in an ancient tomb; it was inclosed in a coarse earthenware vase, and it contained the letter from Abgarus to our Savior, written either in Coptic or uncial Greek characters. The answer of St. Thomas was said not to be with it. I was told that the manuscript afterward came into the possession of the King of Holland, but I have no means at present of ascertaining the truth of the story, or the antiquity of the papyrus of which it forms the subject. ”

“ King Sent belonged to the second dynasty, which flourished 4751 B.C., and the papyrus was old in his day. This papyrus is a medical treatise; there are in it no incantations or charms; but it deals in reasonable remedies, draughts, unguents and injections. The later medical papyri contain a great deal of magic and incantations. ”

“ Parchment, though known for centuries before the Christian Era, was used by the Greek and Roman writers to only a limited extent for a period of some centuries, owing to their continued preference for the papyrus production. The more general use of parchment was finally accelerated by necessity, and on this wise: Ptolemy Philadelphus (prompted perhaps by envy for the growing literary achievements of the kings of Pergamos and by jealousy for the supremacy of Alexandria) laid an embargo upon the exportation of the papyrus, then exclusively produced in Egypt. ”

“ The papyrus is a water plant, the root being always immersed in water. It grows eight or ten feet high, with a stout naked stalk: the leaves are eight in number, sword-shaped, and 106 two feet long. They grow abundantly along the marshy borders of the Nile, and in some parts of Sicily. ”

“ The crafts of scribe and sculptor were thus combined in one man; his chisel traced indifferently funerary portraits and hieroglyphs. When the use of papyrus led to much and rapid writing, the two professions were separated. The scribe wrote sometimes with the kalem upon papyrus, sometimes with the brush or the point upon wood, stucco, or stone. But he always found enough to do in his own profession without combining it with another. ”

“ This remarkable instrument is witnessed by two scribes, with an attestation clause that might almost have been drafted yesterday. The papyrus is a valuable contribution to the study of ancient law, and shows, with a graphic realism, what a pitch of civilization the ancient Egyptians had reached,—at least from a lawyer’s point of view. ”

“ It is uncertain whether the papyrus ever grew naturally in this part of Egypt; at all events, it is not easy to find it at present, except where it is artificially cultivated. In Abyssinia and farther up the Nile the papyrus grows in marshy ground, and sometimes little else can be seen for miles and miles. It has a mass of roots that spread out in the mud, and throw up a cluster of stalks from five to ten feet high. The plant is a very graceful one, and it is no wonder that the Egyptians made free use of it in their ornamentation. ”

“ These valuable documents, denominated papyri, from the material on which they are written, now exist in great numbers in the Berlin Museum, in the British Museum, and in those of Leyden, Turin, Paris, and other cities; but the most important of the papyri treating of medical subjects is certainly the papyrus of Ebers, in the library of the Leipzig University.1 This very valuable papyrus—the most ancient of all known works on Medicine—is the best written of all the Egyptian medical papyri, and is also the best preserved and most voluminous. ”

“ Papyrus nearly six thousand years old has already been found, and it appears doubtful whether we shall ever be able to trace the name of the first man who thought of using the stem of the papyrus plant in so useful a manner.
It seems likely that the discovery may have been due to Egyptian children. If you walk about the English country-side when the bulrushes are flourishing, [Pg 16] it is a common sight to see children plucking the rushes and skinning them to make flowers out of the pith. ”

“ Papyrus was used for writing material not only by the Egyptians but by the Greeks and the Romans also, and for a long time it was the chief substance used for writing throughout the civilized world. It continued in use to a greater or less extent till about the seventh century after Christ.
On the plains of Asia lived the Chaldeans, whose civilization was about as old as that of the Egyptians. But their books were very different. Men use for their purposes the things that are close at hand. In Egypt the papyrus plant was utilized for making books. ”

“ By sticking successive strips of papyrus to each other ancient scribes produced long rolls of manuscript, and from these rolls we derive many of the book terms which are still in use. The most obvious is “volume,” which is from “volvere,” “to roll up”; and “Bible” comes from the Greek “βυβλοἱ,” meaning the inner bark of papyrus.
In China the possibility of making thin feltings with silk fibre was probably known at a very remote period, and [63] it is likely enough that from some such unsatisfactory production the better and usable kinds made of vegetable fibres evolved itself. ”

“ As the hieroglyphics on the walls explained the images in the temples, and the hieroglyphics on the sides of the sepulchral chambers recorded the race and achievements of eminent persons and officers, so did the priests write down their wisdom, and private people their documents on a lighter material, the leaves of the papyrus, a tall reed growing in abundance in the swamps of Egypt. ”

“ The extensive use of the papyrus as writing material is evidenced in the fact that an important commerce therein extended over a large part of the civilized world as early as the third century B. C., and continued to be a source of wealth to the Egyptians for centuries after the Christian Era had begun. In fact the use of papyrus continued, although interrupted greatly by the Saracen conquest and the embargo laid upon its importation into71 Pergamum by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, until it was superseded by the manufactured paper as it progressively came into use. ”

“ REMARKS The tales or the magicians are only preserved in a single copy, and of that the beginning is entirely lost. The papyrus was brought from Egypt by an English traveller, and was purchased by the Berlin Museum from the property of Lepsius, who had received it from the owner, Miss Westcar: hence it is known as the Westcar papyrus. It was written probably in the XIIth Dynasty, but doubtless embodied tales, which had been floating for generations before, about the names of the early kings. ”

“ Many of the Greek manuscripts were written by scribes and copyists who were slaves, and some of these slaves developed much talent of a literary kind.
The Greeks imported papyrus as a writing material, until one of the Ptolemies, in the interests of the Alexandrian library, decreed that no papyrus should go out of Egypt. This led to the development of parchment, so named from the city of Pergamus, where it was first made. Parchment is the skin of calves, goats or sheep, cleaned and smoothed. ”

“ The papyrus cords are strong, saw them with the blade."
[Papyrus was used not only for writing on, but also for ropes. The bridge of boats on which Xerxes crossed the Hellespont was fastened with cables of papyrus.] ”