The Books were always rolled out horizontally and the text occupied on side, split into columns. These scrolls were rolled up and often contained within wooden tubes to protect them and books were produced by glueing together a number of scrolls up to a length of 10 metres or in some cases even longer (The history of the Egyptian King Ramses III was over 40 metres long). Again a calamus cut from the stem of a reed and then sharpened was often used to scribe but bird feathers were also used.Įgyptians used this material for hundreds of years before the Greeks and Romans eventually adopted the technique.
This 'pith' was cut into thin strips, pressed together and then glued and dried to form a thin flat surface that could be written on. Papyrus is a very thick paper like material that is made from the 'pith' (centre of the stem) of the papyrus plant, a reed like swamp plant that used to be found in abundance along the Nile river. The earliest surviving Papyrus scrolls that contain written words date back to around 2400 BC, originating in Egypt (The Fifth Dynasty of King Neferirkare Kakai), although it has suggested by historians that papyrus could have been used as early as the First Dynasty (3100 BC).
