When is paper not paper? Many modern dictionaries and writers reserve the term “paper” for modern paper made from wood or rag pulp. Since paper made from papyrus was made with thin strips rather than from pulp it is often placed in the category of “writing materials,” and falls outside the modern classification for paper, even though the Victorians called it “natural paper.”1
It wasn’t always like that. In the early days, Roman historians such as Pliny the elder, simply used the Latin word, papyrum to signify “the paper plant, or paper made from it.” Before him the Greeks took papyros to mean “any plant of the paper plant genus.” There was never any question in their minds that “paper” meant anything but sheets or rolls of paper made from the stems of the papyrus plant. The question does remain: where then did the Greek word papyros come from? Several authors believe it derives from the Egyptian “pa-per-aa” (or p’p’r), literally “that of the pharaoh” or “Pharaoh’s own” in reference to the crown’s monopoly on papyrus production. After this came a natural progression when the modern word “paper” evolved from the Latin word papyrus, which arrived in English by way of papire (Norman French and Middle English 1150–1500 A.D.)
People were still using “paper” in the generic sense in the seventeenth century, at a time when paper was handmade from pulp. The earliest pulp paper was not even called “paper” by the Europeans, to whom it was first known as “cloth parchment,” since from the thirteenth century it was made mainly from linen rags.2 Thus, papermaking machines were yet to be introduced when Father Imberdis—a Jesuit priest who described the manufacture of rag paper in his hometown in France in 1693—used the Latin term “papyrus” for the pulp paper of his time.3
We get a whiff of the confusion that would follow when in 1943, the dean of American papermaking, Dard Hunter, tried to explain why the word “paper” appeared in a 1635 translation of Pliny’s famous text on making papyrus paper in ancient Egypt.4 Hunter cautioned the reader to understand that it was all a mistake, although the English was a verbatim translation of the Latin text. Someone, presumably the translator, had translated the Latin “papyrus” as “paper.” Other than noting that papyrus was not “true paper,” Hunter goes no further in his commentary, and we are left in confusion. Is the lightweight writing material made from papyrus to be considered paper, or is it not?
It seems to me that people today have it backwards; paper was in fact born in ancient Egypt and remained paper forever after, much like the terms “wood” or “lumber” apply to the hard, fibrous material that forms the main body of a tree. No one challenges the concept regardless of the tree species used, or whether it has been chipped (then molded into reconstituted wood), or shaved into thin sheets (then glued and laminated into plywood), or just sawn into rough boards, it still falls under the generic category of “wood” and we look for it in a lumberyard.
Perhaps a great deal of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that many people do not realize that a sheet of papyrus paper doesn’t differ much from a sheet of heavyweight, handcrafted bond paper of today. In ancient times it was close to the modern sheet in size, though it differed in color. It was not dead white; it looked more like something the Crane paper company would call “kid finish,” a yellow-tinged heavy paper considered by many to be the height of sophistication. The fibers in papyrus paper sometimes bother a fine steel pen unless the sheet has been given a smooth finish by rubbing or polishing, but a modern ballpoint pen or a quill pen runs easily across its surface. In other words, for all intents and purposes it is paper.
Another mistaken impression is that papyrus paper is fragile; when in reality, it is an especially durable writing surface. Papyrus books and documents from ancient and medieval times had a usable life of hundreds of years. Worse yet, perhaps, was the notion created not long ago in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code that papyrus paper is so delicate that it will dissolve in vinegar. In the novel, a vial of vinegar is said to exist inside a secret document holder called a “cryptex.” Anyone who uses a wrong code or forces the cryptex open causes the vial to shatter, releasing the vinegar. Sophie, the heroine, says that if this happens, the papyrus paper will be reduced to mush, “a glob of meaningless pulp.” This is nonsense. Papyrus paper can be dipped, soaked, and pummeled in vinegar with little or no effect, but the slander stuck, and papyrus paper is now diminished in the eyes of the public. It appeared to over 200 million readers to be a fragile cousin of modern tissue paper, even though the fact, not fiction, is that if the famous Nag Hammadi codices from the third and fourth century had been written on modern wood or rag pulp paper instead of papyrus paper, the texts would have disintegrated into dust long ago.
The problem centers around the practice of reserving the term “paper” for only modern rag paper, which I believe does a disservice to a medium that served human civilization so well for thousands of years and deserves its own special spot in the pantheon of intellectual history, alongside the invention of the personal computer and the Gutenberg press. I think of modern paper made of wood or rag pulp or from animal skin as all simply modifications of the original, which was the lightweight sheet known to the Egyptians as “p’p’r.”
When I refer to “paper” in this book I refer to paper in the wide sense. Wherever possible, I will specify the basic material from which the paper was made.