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The
writing and the papyrus
The
origin of the writing often is considered as divine. Thot, was a lunar god, the god of writing and
knowledge credited with the invention of the hieroglyphic writing of the
Ancient Egyptians. (This
is his name in hieroglyphic writing
 ).
Writing was in fact invented for practical reasons: organization of the
empire, conservation of the decrees, and communication with people of
distant regions.
The Egyptian writing
appears toward 3000 before our time, when King Narmer unified the empires of
High and Low Egypt. For a very long time it was made up of a thousand signs
named hieroglyphs (Greek root: hieros = sacred and glyphein = to engrave).
These signs represented some animals, people, the plants, and objects...
Some were ideograms (the picture represents the whole word) but most words
were composed of several signs. It is only toward the Low Time (about 620
BC.) that the number of hieroglyphs reached several thousand.
The hieroglyphs were
especially used to write texts in the stone face of monuments and tombs. The
Egyptians also used the papyrus, the
forerunner of our present day paper.
They wrote an abridged shape and cursive of the writing sculpted on the
monuments, the hieratic writing. A popular and faster writing named demotic
appeared later. This writing was used to achieve some documents and to make
some lists.
Manufacture
of the papyrus
In
fact the scribes used papyrus the most. They wrote on rollers made from the
stem of the papyrus. One found this plant at the time in abundance very
close to the Nile and mainly in the Delta.
Here
is the method used nowadays for the manufacture of the leaves of papyrus
:
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1.
The
stems of the papyruses are cut to 30 centimetres above the level of the
water. |
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2.
One
removes the outer bark of the plant and then cuts the inner stem into thin
strips. |
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3.
The
strips are put into a container of water
with potash added (during 3days)
to break down the fibres
of the plant
and also to soften them.
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4.
The
strips are then laid side by side
placed
on
a
piece of
cloth - one horizontal and
another vertical layer.
One intertwines as many gills as it is necessary to reach the format of
leaf required. |
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5.
The
leaves
are then covered with a piece of cardboard
and
put 5 minutes in a big manual press to squeeze out the water and to stick
the strips together. The piece of cardbord helps in
absorbing the water in the papyrus.
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6.
After 5 minutes the pieces of cardbord
are removed and dried in the sun. They are then put again on the leaves. The
leaves
will be once more placed
in a press (during 2 hours). |
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7. The leaves will be
then
dry and strong enough to be removed.
They can be used for
painting pictures, sending correspondence or recording all kinds of events.
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