The papyrus is a cyperus, called by the Greeks Biblus. There is no doubt but it was early known in Egypt, since we learn from Horus Apollo, the Egyptians, wishing to describe the antiquity of their origin, figured a faggot, or bundle of papyrus, as an emblem of the food they first subsisted on, when the use of wheat was not yet known in that country. But I should rather apprehend that another plant, hereafter described, and not the papyrus, was what was substituted for wheat, for though the Egyptians sucked the honey or sweetness from the root of the papyrus, it does not appear that any part of this cyperus could be used for food, nor is it so at this day, though the Ensete, the plant to which I allude, might, without difficulty, have been used for bread in early ages before the discovery of wheat; in several provinces it holds its place at this day.

The papyrus seems to me to have early come down from Ethiopia, and to have been used in Upper Egypt immediately after the disuse of hieroglyphics, and the first paper made from this plant was in Seide. By Seide was anciently meant Upper Egypt, and it is so called to this day; and the Saitic, probably the oldest language known in Egypt after the Ethiopic, still subsists, being written in the first character that succeeded the hieroglyphics in the valley or cultivated part of Egypt.

Early, however, as the papyrus was known, it does not appear to me to have ever been a plant that could have existed in, or, as authors have said, been proper to the river Nile; its head is too heavy, and in a plain country the wind must have had too violent a hold of it. The stalk is small and feeble, and withal too tall, the root too short and slender to stay it against the violent pressure of the wind and current, therefore I do constantly believe it never could be a plant growing in the river Nile itself, or in any very deep or rapid river.

Pliny3, who seems to have considered and known it perfectly in all its parts, does not pretend that it ever grew in the body of the Nile itself, but in the calishes or places where the Nile had overflowed and was stagnant, and where the water was not above two cubits high. This observation, I believe, holds good universally, at least it did so wherever I have seen this plant, either in the overflowed ground in the Seide, or Upper Egypt, or in Abyssinia where it never grew in the bed of a river, but generally in some small stream that issued out of, or into some large stagnant lake or abandoned water-course. It did not even trust itself to the weight of the wave of the deepest part of that lake when agitated by the wind, but it grew generally about the borders of it, as far as the depth of the water was within a yard.

Pliny says it grew likewise in Syria, and there I saw it first, before I went into Egypt; it was in the river Jordan, between the situation of the ancient city Paneas, which still bears its name, and the lake of Tiberias, which is probably the lake Pliny alludes to, where he says it grew, and with it the calamus odoratus, one of the adventitious plants brought thither formerly by curious men (as I conjecture) which now exists no more, either in Syria or Egypt. It was on the left hand of the bridge called the Bridge of the Sons of Jacob. The river where it grew was two feet nine inches deep, and it was then increased with rain. It grew likewise, as Guilandinus4 tells us, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates. I apprehend that it was not thus propagated into Asia and Greece till the use of it, as manufactured into paper, was first known.

When that was still admits of some difficulty. Pliny says that Varro writes it came not into general use till after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander; yet it is plain from Anacreon5, AlcÆus, Æschylus, and the comic poets, that it was known in their time. Plato and Aristotle speak of it also, so do Herodotus and Theophrastus6. We also know it was of old in use among the Ionians, who probably brought it in very early days directly from Egypt. Numa, too, who lived 300 years before Alexander, is said to have left a number of books wrote on the papyrus, which a long time after his death were found at Rome.

All this might very well be; the writers of those early ages were but few, and those that then were, had all of them, more or less, connection by their learning with Egypt; it was to them only Egypt was known, and if they learned to write there, it was not improbable, that from thence too they adopted the materials most commodious for writing upon.

With Aristotle began the first arrangement of a library. Alexander’s conquest, and the building of Alexandria, laid open Egypt, its trade and learning, to the world. Papyrus then, or the paper made from it, was the only materials made use of for writing upon. A violent desire of amassing books, and a library, immediately followed, which we may safely attribute to the example set by Aristotle.

The Ptolemies, and the kings of Pergamus, contended who should make the largest collection. The Ptolemies, masters of Egypt and of the papyrus, availed themselves of this monopoly to hinder the multiplication of books in Greece. The other princes probably smuggled this plant, and propagated it wherever it would grow out of Egypt. And Eumenes king of Pergamus set about bringing to perfection the manufacture of parchment, which, long before, the Ionians had used from the scarcity of paper; for whatever resemblance there might be in names, or whatever may be inferred from them, writing upon skins or parchment was much more ancient than any city or state in Greece and in use probably before Greece was inhabited. The Jews we know made use of it in the earliest ages. At this very time which we are now speaking of, we learn from Josephus7, that the elders, by order of the high priest, carried a copy of the law to Ptolemy Philadelphus in letters of gold upon skins, the pieces of which were so artfully put together that the joinings did not appear.

The ancients divided this plant into three parts, the head and the small part of the stalk were cut off, then the woody part, or bottom, and the root connected with it, and there remained the middle. All these had separate uses. Pliny8 says the upper part, which supported the large top itself, with the flowers upon it, was of no sort of use but to adorn the temples, and crown the statues of the gods; but it would seem that it was in use likewise for crowning men of merit. Plutarch9 says, that Agesilaus preferred being crowned with that to any other, on account of its simplicity, and that parting from the king he had sought to be crowned with this as a favour, which was granted him. AthenÆus10, on the contrary, laughed at those that mixt roses in the crown of papyrus, and he says it is as ridiculous as mixing roses with a crown of garlic. The reason, however, he gives does not hold, for papyrus itself smells no more of mud, as he supposes, than a rose-bush; nay, the flower of the papyrus has something agreeable in its smell, though not so much so as roses. If he had said that the head of the papyrus resembled withered grass or hay, and made a bad contrast with the richness and beauty of the rose, he had said well. But notwithstanding what Pliny has written, the head of the papyrus was employed, not only to make crowns for statues of the gods, but also to make cables for ships. We are told that Antigonus made use of nothing else for ropes and cables to his fleets, before the use of spartum, or bent-grass, was known, which, though very little better, still serves that purpose in small ships on the coast of Provence to this day. The top of the papyrus was likewise used for sewing and caulking the vessels, by forcing it into the seams, and afterwards covering it with pitch.

Pliny11 tells us, that the whole plant together was used for making boats, a piece of the acacia tree being put in the bottom to serve as the keel, to which plants were joined, being first sewed together, then gathered up at stem and stern, and the ends of the plant tied fast there, “Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro;” and this is the only boat they still have in Abyssinia, which they call Tancoa, and from the use of these it is that Isaiah describes the nations, probably the Egyptians, upon whom the vengeance of God was speedily to fall. I imagine also that the junks of the Red Sea, said to be of leather, were first built with papyrus and covered with skins. In these the Homerites trafficked with their friends the Sabeans across the mouth of the Red Sea, but they can never persuade me, however generally and confidently it has been asserted, that vessels of this kind could have lived an hour upon the Indian ocean.

The bottom, root, or woody part of this plant, was likewise of several uses before it turned absolutely hard; it was chewed in the manner of liquorice, having a considerable quantity of sweet juice in it. This we learn from Dioscorides; it was, I suppose, chewed, and the sweetness sucked out in the same manner as is done with sugar-cane. This is still practised in Abyssinia, where they likewise chew the root of the Indian corn, and of every kind of cyperus; and Herodotus tells us, that about a cubit of the lower part of the stalk was cut off and roasted over the fire, and eaten.

From the scarcity of wood, which was very great in Egypt for the reasons I have already mentioned, this lower part was likewise used in making cups, moulds, and other necessary utensils; we need not doubt too, one use of the woody part of this plant was to serve for what we call boards or covers for binding the leaves, which were made of the bark; we know that this was anciently one use of it, both from AlcÆus and Anacreon.

In a large and very perfect manuscript in my possession, which was dug up at Thebes, the boards are of papyrus root, covered first with the coarser pieces of the paper, and then with leather, in the same manner as it would be done now. It is a book one would call a small folio, rather than by any other name, and I apprehend that the shape of the book where papyrus is employed was always of the same form with those of the moderns. The letters are strong, deep, black, and apparently written with a reed, as is practised by the Egyptians and Abyssinians still. It is written on both sides, so never could be rolled up as parchment was, nor would the brittleness of the materials when dry, support any such frequent unrolling. This probably arises from their having first written upon papyrus, after the use of stone was laid aside, and only adopted skins upon their embracing the Jewish religion. The Ethiopians, indeed, write upon parchment, yet use the same form of books as we do. The outer boards are made of wood and covered with leather. It was the law only they say they were in use to preserve in one long roll of parchment, upon the foreside of which it was written; it being indecent and improper to write any part of it on the back, or a less honourable place of the skin: And such was the roll we have just mentioned as presented to Ptolemy, where such pains were taken in joining the several skins together, for this very reason.

The manner paper was made has been controverted; but whoever will read Pliny12 attentively, cannot, as I imagine, be long in doubt. The thick part of the stalk being cut in half, the pellicle between the pith and the bark, or perhaps the two pellicles, were stript off, and divided by an iron instrument, which probably was sharp-pointed, but did not cut at the edges. This was squared at the sides so as to be like a ribband, then laid upon a smooth table or dresser, after being cut into the length that it was required the leaf should be. These stripes, or ribbands of papyrus, were lapped over each other by a very thin border, and then pieces of the same kind were laid transversely, the length of these answering to the breadth of the first. The book which I have is eleven inches and a half long, and seven inches broad, and there is not one leaf in it that has a ribband of papyrus of two inches and a half broad, from which I imagine the size of this plant, formerly being fifteen feet long, was pretty near the truth. No such plant, however, appears now; I do not remember to have ever seen one more than ten feet high. This is probably owing to their being allowed to grow wild, and too thick together, without being weeded; we know from Herodotus13, that the Egyptians cut theirs down yearly as they did their harvest.

These ribbands, or stripes of papyrus, have twelve different names in Pliny14, which is to be copious with a vengeance. They are, philura, ramentum; scheda, cutis, plagula, corium, tÆnia, subtegmen, statumen, pagina, tabula, and papyrus. After these, by whatever name you call them, were arranged at right angles to each other, a weight was placed upon them while moist, which compressed them, and so they were suffered to dry in the sun.

It was supposed that the water of the Nile15 had a gummy quality necessary to glue these stripes together. This we may be assured is without foundation, no such quality being found in the water of the Nile. On the contrary, I found it of all others the most improper, till it had settled, and was absolutely divested of all the earth gathered in its turbid state. I made several pieces of this paper, both in Abyssinia and Egypt, and it appears to me, that the sugar or sweetness with which the whole juice of this plant is impregnated, is the matter that causes the adhesion of these stripes together, and that the use of the water is no more than to dissolve this, and put it perfectly and equally in fusion.

There seemed to be an advantage in putting the inside of the pellicle in the situation that it was before divided, that is, the interior parts face to face, one long-ways, and one cross-ways, after which a thin board of the cover of a book was laid first over it, and a heap of stones piled upon it. I do not think it succeeded with boiled water, and it was always coarse and gritty with the water of the Nile. Some pieces were excellent, made with water that had settled, that is, in the state in which we drink it; but even the best of it was always thick and heavy, drying very soon, then turning firm and rigid, and never white; nor did I ever find one piece that would bear the strokes of a mallet16, but in its greenest state the blow shivered and divided the fibres length-ways; nor did I see the marks of any stroke of a hammer or mallet in the book in my custody, which is certainly on Saitic or Hieratic paper. I apprehend by a passage in Pliny17, that the mallet was used only when artificial glue or gum was made use of, which must have been as often as they let these stripes of the ribband or pellicle dry before arranging them.

Pliny18 says, the books of Numa were 830 years old when they were found, and he wonders, from the brittleness of the inside of the paper, it could have lasted so long. The manuscript in my possession, which was dug up at Thebes, I conjecture is near three times the age that Pliny mentions; and, though it is certainly fragil, has substance and preservation of letter enough, with good care, to last as much longer, and be legible.

If the Saitic paper was, as we imagine, the first invented, it should follow, contrary to what Isidore advances, that it was not first invented in Memphis, but in Upper Egypt in Seide, whose language and writing obtained in the earliest age, though Lucan seems to think with Isidore,

After the hieroglyphics were lost, perhaps some time before, we know nothing the Egyptians adopted so generally as paper, and there were probably19 religious reasons that impeded in those early days the people from falling upon the most natural, the skins of beasts. However this be, it is certain under the Egyptians, naturally averse to novelty and improvement, paper arrived to no great perfection till taken in hands by the Romans. The Charta Claudia was thirteen inches wide, the Hieratica, or Saitica, eleven, and such is the length of the leaf of my book in the Saitic dialect, that is, the old Coptic, or Egyptian of Upper Egypt. I have no idea what the Emporetic paper was, which obtained that degree of coarseness and toughness, as to serve for shopkeepers’ uses to tie up goods, unless it was like our brown paper employed to the same purposes.

If the date of the invention of this useful art of making paper is doubtful, the time when it was lost, or superseded by one more convenient, is as uncertain. Eustathius says it was disused in his time in the 1170. Mabillon endeavours to prove it existed in the 9th, and even that there existed some Popish bulls wrote upon it as late as the 11th century. He gives, as instances, a part of St Mark’s Gospel preserved at Venice as being upon papyrus, and the fragment of Josephus at Milan to be cotton paper, while Maffei proves this to be just the reverse, that of St Mark being cotton, and the other indisputably he thinks to be Egyptian papyrus, so that Mabillon’s authority as to the bulls of the pope may be fairly questioned.

The several times I have been at these places mentioned, I have never succeeded in seeing any of these pieces; that of St Mark at Venice I was assured had been recognized to be cotton paper; it was rendered not legible by the warm saliva of zealots kissing it from devotion, which I can easily comprehend must contain a very corrosive quality, and the Venetians now refuse to shew it more. I have seen two detached leaves of papyrus, but do not believe there is another book existing at the present time but that in my possession, which is very perfect. I gave Dr Woide leave to translate it at Lord North’s desire; it is a gnostic book, full of their dreams.

The general figure of this plant Pliny has rightly said to resemble a Thyrsus; the head is composed of a number of small grassy filaments, each about a foot long. About the middle, each of these filaments parts into four, and in the point, or partition, are four branches of flowers; the head of this is not unlike an ear of wheat in form, but which in fact is but a chaffy, silky, soft husk. These heads, or flowers, grow upon the stalk alternately, and are not opposite to, or on the same line with each other at the bottom.

Pliny20 says it has no seed; but this we may be assured is an absurdity. The form of the flower sufficiently indicates that it was made to resolve itself into the covering of one, which is certainly very small, and by its exalted situation, and thickness of the head of the flower, seems to have needed the extraordinary covering it has had to protect it from the violent hold the wind must have had upon it. For the same reason, the bottom of the filaments composing the head are sheathed in four concave leaves, which keep them close together, and prevent injury from the wind getting in between them.

The stalk is of a vivid green, thickest at the bottom, and tapering up to the top21; it is of a triangular form. In the Jordan, the single side, or apex of the triangle, stood opposed to the stream as the cut-water of a boat or ship, or the sharp angle of a buttress of a bridge, by which the pressure of the stream upon the stalk would be greatly diminished. I do not precisely remember how it stood in the lakes in Ethiopia and Egypt, and only have this remark in the notes I made at the Jordan.

This construction of the stalk of the papyrus seems to reproach Aristotle with want of observation. He says that no plant had either triangular or quadrangular stalks. Here we see an instance of the contrary in the papyrus, whose stalk is certainly and universally triangular; and we learn from Dioscorides that many more have quadrangular stalks, or stems of four angles.

It has but one root, which is large and strong22, Pliny says, as thick as a man’s arm: So it was, probably, when the plant was fifteen feet high, but it is now diminished in proportion, the whole length of the stalk, comprehending the head, being a little above ten, but the root is still hard and solid near the heart, and works with the turning loom tolerably well, as it did formerly when they made cups of it. In the middle of this long root arises the stalk at right angles, so when inverted it has the figure of a T, and on each side of the large root there are smaller elastic ones, which are of a direction perpendicular to it, and which, like the strings of a tent, steady it and fix it to the earth at the bottom. About two feet, or little more, of the lower part of the stalk is cloathed with long, hollow, sword-shaped leaves, which cover each other like scales, and fortify the foot of the plant. They are of a dusky brown, or yellow colour. I suppose the stalk was cut off below, at about where these leaves end.

The drawing represents the papyrus as growing. The head is not upright, but is inclined, as from its size it always must be in hot countries, in which alone it grows. In all such climates, there is some particular wind that reigns longer than others, and this being always the most violent, as well as the most constant, gives to heavy-headed trees, or plants, an inclination contrary to that from which it blows.

This plant is called el Berdi in Egypt, which signifies nothing in Arabic, and I suppose is old Egyptian. I have been told by a learned gentleman23, that in Syria it is known by the name of Babeer, which approaches more to the sound of papyrus, and paper; this I never heard myself, but leave it entirely upon his authority.