Papyrus sheet from Egypt
Ancient Egypt - pharaohs, pyramids, papyrus
These are the three p-terms coming into our minds immediately when thinking about the fabulous world of the old Egyptians. The pharaohs` pursue of immortality and joining the world of the Gods resulted in the construction of the great pyramids which are fascinating us even today. A lesser known fact is that the small papyrus sheet acted also as a mummies´ cover, for example.
For that purpose the papyri (plural of papyrus) were sticked together to entire cardboard packages. And even nowadays old texts still readible can be found on the papyrus sheet when peeling off the cardboard packages. In the ancient world papyrus sheet was the most important material to write on ever, so at that time it played the same part as paper does today, so to say. The German expression "Papier" refers to the Latin expression "papyrus" that is borrowed from the Greek "pápyros" which again is based on the reconstructed ancient Greek expression "pa-en-per-aa", meaning more or less "from pharao".
- Handworked papyrus for impressive writings
- Size: approx. 60 x 20 cm
- Material: pulp of the papyrus plant
- Manufacture: Handwork from Egypt
- Property: naturally embedded leaf margins
The papyrus sheet is telling history and captures the world
In old Egypt papyrus has been used as a material to write on already from the third century before Christ and it remained the common writing material for letters or certificates until the early Middle Ages. Although papyrus is very sensitive to humidity or mechanical strain, however the material shows an amazing long-term durability and it provided many valuable informations especially to the archaeologists. The most famous papyrus rolls are the Herculaneum papyri which were preserved by massive ash layers from the powerful Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 Anno Domini and were found only through accidentally later excavations.
Further more than 400.000 papyri from the old Egyptian Oxyrhynchus will bring up much interesting information again. Also the history of Cleopatra shows the meaning of the papyrys rolls. For a very long time she could not forgive Caesar that his soldiers set the large, famous and destructive fire in the library of Alexandria whereby thousands of significant papyrus writings were destroyed. After this event Caesar had to promise her to deliver each new-found document from his conquered territories to her library. Indeed, Caesar kept his promise to keep the favour of this fascinating ruler.
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