Archaeology: Papyrus

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Papyrus Dec 12th 2011, 06:28 I have a long-standing fascination with the written word (duh), so when I recently stumbled across a handful of papers about papyrus, how you make it and how old it is, how could I possibly resist writing a new article about the mother of writing papers? Papyrus Swamp near Kabarole, Uganda. Photo by AnSchieber Papyrus is a pretty peculiar looking plant that grows in the wetlands of the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates and a bunch of other rivers of the Old World. The image on the blog entry shows a typical environment for a papyrus plant: in a swamp near a river floodplain. Paper is made by cracking open the triangular stem, scooping out the pith and... But wait! you can read more about Papyrus if you've a mind to... By the way, there is an interesting project from the people who are working on Oxyrhynchus. Oxyryhnchus is a site on the Nile River where a library's-worth of manuscripts was discovered preserved in a rubbish heap. Over 200,000 papyrus manuscripts were pulled out of the midden, and after a century of working on the texts, the scholars decided to produce facsimiles and put them on the web. Now anyone can help with the transcription process, by matching the markings on the manuscripts to a grid of possible characters. Go to Ancient Lives to try your hand at discovering history! Papyrus Ancient Lives: Transcribing the Library at Oxyrhynchus

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