These ribbands, or stripes of papyrus, have twelve different names in Pliny[14], which is to be copious with a vengeance. They are, philura, ramentum; scheda, cutis, plagula, corium, tænia, subtegmen, statumen, pagina, tabula, and papyrus. After these, by whatever name you call them, were arranged at right angles to each other, a weight was placed upon them while moist, which compressed them, and so they were suffered to dry in the sun.
It was supposed that the water of the Nile[15] had a gummy quality necessary to glue these stripes together. This we may be assured is without foundation, no such quality being found in the water of the Nile. On the contrary, I found it of all others the most improper, till it had settled, and was absolutely divested of all the earth gathered in its turbid state. I made several pieces of this paper, both in Abyssinia and Egypt, and it appears to me, that the sugar or sweetness with which the whole juice of this plant is impregnated, is the matter that causes the adhesion of these stripes together, and that the use of the water is no more than to dissolve this, and put it perfectly and equally in fusion.
There seemed to be an advantage in putting the inside of the pellicle in the situation that it was before divided, that is, the interior parts face to face, one long-ways, and one cross-ways, after which a thin board of the cover of a book was laid first over it, and a heap of stones piled upon it. I do not think it succeeded with boiled water, and it was always coarse and gritty with the water of the Nile. Some pieces were excellent, made with water that had settled, that is, in the state in which we drink it; but even the best of it was always thick and heavy, drying very soon, then turning firm and rigid, and never white; nor did I ever find one piece that would bear the strokes of a mallet[16], but in its greenest state the blow shivered and divided the fibres length-ways; nor did I see the marks of any stroke of a hammer or mallet in the book in my custody, which is certainly on Saitic or Hieratic paper. I apprehend by a passage in Pliny[17], that the mallet was used only when artificial glue or gum was made use of, which must have been as often as they let these stripes of the ribband or pellicle dry before arranging them.
Pliny[18] says, the books of Numa were 830 years old when they were found, and he wonders, from the brittleness of the inside of the paper, it could have lasted so long. The manuscript in my possession, which was dug up at Thebes, I conjecture is near three times the age that Pliny mentions; and, though it is certainly fragil, has substance and preservation of letter enough, with good care, to last as much longer, and be legible.
If the Saitic paper was, as we imagine, the first invented, it should follow, contrary to what Isidore advances, that it was not first invented in Memphis, but in Upper Egypt in Seide, whose language and writing obtained in the earliest age, though Lucan seems to think with Isidore,
Nondum flumineas Memphis contexere biblos
Noverat.——
Lucan, lib. iii.
After the hieroglyphics were lost, perhaps some time before, we know nothing the Egyptians adopted so generally as paper, and there were probably[19] religious reasons that impeded in those early days the people from falling upon the most natural, the skins of beasts. However this be, it is certain under the Egyptians, naturally averse to novelty and improvement, paper arrived to no great perfection till taken in hands by the Romans. The Charta Claudia was thirteen inches wide, the Hieratica, or Saitica, eleven, and such is the length of the leaf of my book in the Saitic dialect, that is, the old Coptic, or Egyptian of Upper Egypt. I have no idea what the Emporetic paper was, which obtained that degree of coarseness and toughness, as to serve for shopkeepers’ uses to tie up goods, unless it was like our brown paper employed to the same purposes.
If the date of the invention of this useful art of making paper is doubtful, the time when it was lost, or superseded by one more convenient, is as uncertain. Eustathius says it was disused in his time in the 1170. Mabillon endeavours to prove it existed in the 9th, and even that there existed some Popish bulls wrote upon it as late as the 11th century. He gives, as instances, a part of St Mark’s Gospel preserved at Venice as being upon papyrus, and the fragment of Josephus at Milan to be cotton paper, while Maffei proves this to be just the reverse, that of St Mark being cotton, and the other indisputably he thinks to be Egyptian papyrus, so that Mabillon’s authority as to the bulls of the pope may be fairly questioned.
The several times I have been at these places mentioned, I have never succeeded in seeing any of these pieces; that of St Mark at Venice I was assured had been recognized to be cotton paper; it was rendered not legible by the warm saliva of zealots kissing it from devotion, which I can easily comprehend must contain a very corrosive quality, and the Venetians now refuse to shew it more. I have seen two detached leaves of papyrus, but do not believe there is another book existing at the present time but that in my possession, which is very perfect. I gave Dr Woide leave to translate it at Lord North’s desire; it is a gnostic book, full of their dreams.
The general figure of this plant Pliny has rightly said to resemble a Thyrsus; the head is composed of a number of small grassy filaments, each about a foot long. About the middle, each of these filaments parts into four, and in the point, or partition, are four branches of flowers; the head of this is not unlike an ear of wheat in form, but which in fact is but a chaffy, silky, soft husk. These heads, or flowers, grow upon the stalk alternately, and are not opposite to, or on the same line with each other at the bottom.