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.)