Papyrus Paper in Syracuse since 1781
The invention of writing, in human communities, marks the passage from
prehistoric to historic. In Egypt this moment was around 3000 B.C. and
came from the need, from the lack of money, to take note of the quantities
of supplies that the Pharaohs took from the farmers and for the bookkeeping
of cereal supplies that were used in the periods of famine caused by little
or no rain. Thus requiring complex tax, census and recording operations,
which couldn't be done mentally, writing was invented. At first, it is
presumed, with a type of signs called hieroglyphics (deciphered after
the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, that came to the light in 1798 during
the Napoleon Expedition in Egypt; the stone reproduced the same text written
in 196 B.C. It shows three different types of writing: hieroglyphics,
demotic and Greek).
Writing materials were wooden bars; leather worked into thin sheets, stone
slabs and also flattened rocks, walls and columns of buildings, clogs
of statues, obelisks, terracotta vases, ivory. The Egyptians, while perfectioning
the stone writings, managed to create a light and flexible material, papyrus
paper. A Nile rush with a thick stem, pointed and fuzzy at one end and
a pointed cane at the other was used for writing; initially ink was made
with red ochre or ground black smoke and was used in the water paint technique;
afterwards by using powders obtained from mineral materials, the colours
were enriched by other colours (white, green, yellow and blue), the matching
had a religious and magic meaning. From Egypt papyrus paper spread all
over the known ancient world, following the expansion of the Persian,
Macedonian and Roman empires.
In Egypt the production stopped in 1061 B.C., because of a prolonged drought
of the Nile lasted for seven years: the quantity of the water was reduced,
the papyri disappeared, the factories failed and the manufacture methods
of the paper were not any longer handed down. Paper making in Egypt appeared
again only in 1962, paper produced, yet, is wood like and yellowish, however
different from the best papyri of the Pharaohs age (3100/332 B.C.).
