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.
Papyrus as a material upon which to write was both cheaper and more
plentiful than parchment, and for these reasons it was more commonly
utilized than any other prior to the invention of paper. The papyrus,
while more plentiful and less expensive than parchment, was not
inexpensive as a finished commodity; indeed, it was so expensive that
the poor were often denied this material for writing. It is recorded
that, in the list of expenses relating to the rebuilding of the
Erechtheum at Athens (B. C. 407), two sheets of papyri cost at the rate
of a drachma and two obols each, or a little over a shilling of our
money.[26] The author of an old work gives a quaint description of the
plant and of its preparation for use: "It runs up in a triangular stalk
to the height of about fifteen feet and is usually about a foot and a
half in circumference, sometimes more. When the outer skin is taken
off there are several films, or inner skins, one within another and
naturally partakable from each other. These, when separated from the
stalk and flaked, made the paper which the ancients used, and which,
from the name of the tree, they called Papyrus."[27]
Concerning the process of its preparation, as we learn from various
sources: The inner skins or fibrous rinds of the plant were peeled
off, somewhat as the outer bark of a birch tree may be detached,
and then these strips of the papyrus were placed one upon another
so that the "grain," or fiber, of each strip would extend crosswise
to the other--sometimes three layers, even, were superimposed one
upon another--after the manner of the modern two or three-ply wood
veneering. The purpose of this process was to give greater strength and
durability to the writing material made therefrom. The glutinous juice
in these strips, (or, perhaps they were moistened by the waters of the
Nile) on being subjected to pressure were glued together in one intact
sheet. These larger sheets were afterwards smoothed and polished,
bleached in the sun, and then cut up into strips to the dimensions of
eight, twelve, or even fifteen inches in width as desired, for the
rolls, or, as at a later time, into short, rectangular sections for the
leaves of books.
The writing on these rolls, as on those made of parchment, was in
columns, crosswise at convenient intervals, with a margin at the top
and the bottom of the columns. The length of the column lines of
writing was governed by the writer's taste or inclination, or the
character of the composition--if poetical, by the metre. The size of
the rolls, however, was determined by the amount of writing to be
recorded--one of the longer books of the New Testament; _e. g._, would
constitute an ordinary roll, while it would require thirty or forty
or even more rolls on which to transcribe the entire Bible. According
to BIRT, the average length of the papyrus roll slightly exceeded
forty feet, but instances are cited of rolls reaching the length of
one hundred and fifty feet. This writer is authority for the statement
that a Homeric papyrus roll one hundred and twenty feet in length
was burned in Byzantium in the fifth century. Mr. Putnam observes in
connection with the size of the papyrus rolls: "It is possible the
writer of the Apocalypse may have had one of these enormous scrolls in
his vision when he beheld the record of the sins of Babylon reaching
to the heavens."[28] The larger papyrus books were thus, literally,
"weighty tomes," and, because they were too heavy and cumbrous to hold
in the hand, were read from a table or desk. The cumbrous character
of these large volumes was the basis for the dictum of the Alexandrian
grammarian, "A big book is a big nuisance."
At a later period, not determinable, the papyrus writing material was
no longer made up into roll form but was cut into rectangular sheets of
various dimensions, according to the taste of the writer or the special
need, and was then bound together somewhat as a modern book. Sometimes,
when greater durability was sought, the writer or copyist would insert
a leaf of parchment at every five or six leaves of the papyrus. This
added greatly to the durability of the book. There are examples of
books thus "reinforced" which have resisted the destructive influences
of time and use for twelve centuries together. The fragile and
extremely perishable character of the papyrus makes it most remarkable
that any writing thereon should have survived for centuries; indeed,
according to Pliny, a volume two centuries old was considered so
exceptional as to be almost incredible. It was the perishable character
of this material that made the frequent renewal of manuscripts handled
a constant necessity, and hence the occupation of the copyists and the
department of reproduction in the libraries were logical. The fragile
character of the papyrus led, also, to the frequent use of a wooden
case, called a _capsa_, to protect and preserve the roll. It was under
very exceptional conditions only, as in mummy-cases of Egyptian tombs
where they escaped the touch of man and, almost, the touch of time
as well, and, as hermetically sealed under lava beds at Pompeii and
Herculaneum, that the fragile papyrus was sometimes preserved for
centuries.
The earliest known papyrus manuscripts date from the time of
the twelfth dynasty of Egypt, or from a period of more than two
thousand years before the Christian Era began. These oldest existing
papyrus documents yet discovered are written in Egyptian--in three
characters--in _hieroglyphics_, the most ancient or the picture-writing
of the earliest times (translatable by the decipherment of the Rosetta
Stone), in the _hieratic_, or the writing of the priests of Egypt from
the period of the fourth or fifth dynasty (3124-2744 B. C., Lepsius)
on to the third or fourth century of the Christian Era, and in the
_demotic_, or the later and popular form of the priestly writing.
In general, however, the papyrus period of the Egyptian literature
extended from the fourth century B. C. to the fourth century A. D.
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 into Pergamum by the Ptolemaic rulers
of Egypt, until it was superseded by the manufactured paper as it
progressively came into use. (Isaac Taylor.)
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