How it began
Papyrus as a writing material came from the plant Cyperus papyrus, which grew in abundance in the marshes of the Nile Delta and elsewhere in the Nile Valley, in what is now Egypt. The plant was harvested from the Predynastic Period onward and was later cultivated on managed farms. Ancient Egyptians used the stem for sails, cloth, mats and cords and, above all, for a paper that became the chief writing material of the country. The central government controlled processing, and one proposed origin of the Greek name is an Egyptian phrase meaning "that of the pharaoh".
Before it existed
Papyrus was costly to make, so it never fully replaced older and cheaper surfaces. Written works in Egypt often appear on pieces of wood, on stone and on ostraca, the broken shards of clay pots. These were the most common and cheapest writing materials, and students practiced their letters on them for years before they were allowed to write on a papyrus roll. Papyrus itself was mostly reserved for religious and government texts.
How it works
Workers removed the fibrous layers from inside the stem and cut them into thin strips. One set of strips was laid side by side, and a second set was laid across it at right angles. The two layers were dampened and pressed, and the gluelike sap of the plant cemented them together as they dried. The sheet was then hammered and dried in the sun. Sheets were pasted end to end to form a roll, usually of not more than 20 sheets. The side with horizontal fibers, the recto, was written on first.
How it spread
Papyrus paper was adopted by the Greeks and was used extensively in the Roman Empire, for books in roll form and for correspondence and legal documents. Pliny the Elder left an account of how it was made. With cereals, it was among Egypt's chief exports in the Late Period and in Greco-Roman times.
Who pushed back
By the 3rd century CE papyrus had begun to be replaced in Europe by less expensive vellum, or parchment. In Egypt it was cultivated and used for writing until the growing manufacture of paper from other plant fibers in the 8th and 9th centuries made it unnecessary. Its use for books and documents continued sporadically until about the 12th century.
What lasted
The English word "paper" comes from "papyrus". Surviving rolls preserve hymns, letters, official records, literature and medical texts. The Ebers Papyrus, a medical text of about 1550 BCE, runs to 110 pages on a roll about 20 meters long. Most papyrus documents have been found in Egypt, where the dry climate preserved them, and their study is the field of papyrology.
