The papyrus plant needed fresh water or water-saturated earth to grow. From these “germs of creation,” the Egyptians extracted the material on which they could create and record for millennia. The papyrus plant was a symbol of rebirth. Papyrus marshes were thus seen as fecund, fertile regions that contained the germs of creation. "In ancient Egyptian cosmology, the world was created when the first god stood on a mound that emerged from limitless and undifferentiated darkness and water, a mythical echo of the moment each year when the land begins to reappear from beneath the annual floodwaters. As Janice Kamrin of the Department of Egyption Art at the Metropolitan Museum of art once wrote, The papyrus plant was very important to the ancient Egyptians. (4) This material, papyrus, would remain in use for longer than any other material in the history of written documents. Around 3000 BC, the Egyptians would revolutionize the literary world by producing a smooth, flexible writing material that could accept and retain ink without a blur or smudge. (4) These clay fragments were also used by many in Egypt and across Europe. The first documented material, clay, was used heavily the river plains of of Mesopotamia, where many believe writing was born. Over the course of thousands of years, different materials and literary forms dominated in distinct regions and eras. The development of writing has been a been a long process based on experimentation and a cycle of new methods gradually replacing the old. This piece serves to highlight the role of papyrus in the development of writing, documentation, and literature as we now know it. Lastly, I will describe my experiences with papyrus in order to provide my insight into its quality as a writing surface. I will first explain the general history of the material, followed by a brief explanation of how we now believe rolls of papyrus were constructed. In the following post, I will discuss papyrus and its function in the history of writing and documentation.
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