The technique of papyrus papermaking has always been a simple operation compared to, say, the construction of monuments and buildings; still it was a process successfully kept under wraps, and remained a closely guarded secret since the whole production was considered the property of the pharaohs. Following the arrival of Alexander the Great in Egypt, from 300 B.C. onwards, the royal ownership began to loosen under the Ptolemies. By that point, the royal family, though no longer controlling production, still exerted control over the distribution, sale, and taxation of papyrus paper. After that, the largest change came with the Roman takeover, when the old royal ownership disappeared completely and was replaced by private ownership. The papyrus swamps were now managed like any other agricultural land.1 Over time, the Romans moved the title of some of the largest swamps into the emperor’s patrimonium (a fund created to hold the private fortune and inheritance of the emperor’s estate), at which point when the land and swamps were contracted out, the proceeds went to the imperial household.
Even when papermaking was privatized, the manufacturing process was not well publicized. Perhaps the manufacturers of paper wanted it that way, and were determined to keep it a trade secret. Even after Pliny published details of the process in 77 A.D. and supposedly papyrus paper could be made by anyone, there was still the issue of getting access to the raw material. As far as anyone in the Roman Empire was concerned, the paper was still only made in Egypt because that was the only place the plant grew in significant quantities.
In this way papyrus paper qualified as a full-blown monopoly and it remained so from 3000 B.C. until it disappeared in 1000 A.D. Compared to other well-known monopolies throughout world history, it was the clear winner. The longest maintained monopolies, such as the Thurn and Taxis family postal service in Europe (578 years); the Tang Dynasty salt commission in China (369 years); the British East India Company (274 years); Standard Oil in the USA (41 years) and DeBeers diamond monopoly (27 years), all pale in comparison. Four thousand years of uninterrupted and exclusive control over production is a clear winner that can never be topped. The rubber, coffee, cocoa, quinine, and banana empires of early days in the American tropics were all broken when rogue planters whipped seeds or cuttings of productive plants and started production elsewhere away from the mother plantations.
With papyrus paper, the only break in the export stream came when Ptolemy II is said to have stopped the export of papyrus paper in an attempt to stifle book acquisition in the city of Pergamum. That Anatolian city was fast becoming a center of Greek learning and stood in direct competition to Alexandria. But normally, production and export went forward inexorably; nothing prevented the flow of paper from the source to the seat of power in Rome, except the occasional riot or political disturbance in Egypt.
Pliny tells us that on one occasion during the reign of Tiberius (14–37 A.D.), papyrus paper tended to be in short supply, which led to the appointment of commissioners from the Senate to oversee its distribution, “otherwise daily life would have been in turmoil.” This illustrates the largest disadvantage of such a monopoly, if the supply fails for any reason as it did on that occasion; chaos follows unless the product is rationed as it was in this case by the Roman Senate. To avoid this, there were several attempts to grow papyrus elsewhere2 but although it grew, it never reached the high rate of production achieved in Egypt in ancient days.
Here then was the one plant in the history of the world powerful enough to stop the Roman Empire in its tracks. In this way, it ruled the world in the same fashion that King Cotton ruled the American South; the demand was met exclusively by the papyrus swamps of Egypt. Whoever controlled Egypt controlled the medium of choice. And it was a big business employing thousands of people, some highly specialized, for the different branches of the industry: cultivating and harvesting the plant, transporting the raw material to the factory, fabrication, sale, and shipment of the finished product.
Why did the paper industry work so well in Egypt? Perhaps because, behind the scenes, a papyrus paper cartel was in operation, as suggested by the historian Strabo in 18 A.D.: “Some persons intending to augment the revenue . . . in many places it (papyrus) is not allowed to be cultivated, and the price is enhanced . . . the revenue is indeed thus increased, though they injure the common use of the plant.”3
Professor Lewis also saw evidence of a cartel in ancient Roman contracts where pressure was exerted that could only come from such an entity. He felt that only a papermaker’s cartel would be able to hold down labor costs and harvest the plant so as to curtail production. The cartel could thus drive up the value of the paper crop, while limiting their liability in the contracts and so protect their income, yet keep the end-user cost of paper within reason.
The cartel must have found it an easy job to keep the price of paper at a profitable level, since from the beginning it cost almost nothing to make. Better yet, it was confined to Egypt. Some papyrus swamps were found in Sicily where a small amount of paper was made in Arabic times for the sultan. It also grew in the Jordan valley and presumably some paper could have been made in the area of the Dead Sea at the scriptorium at Khirbet Qumran. But, the major portion of paper came from the delta where the cartel set the price. And they did this in such a way that papyrus paper always sold below the price of parchment. Even in the third and fourth centuries when papyrus documents were being converted to parchment, papyrus was still two-and-a-half times cheaper.4
In the process of making money, the cartel convinced almost everyone for thousands of years that papyrus paper could only be made on the Nile, in their factories, from fresh stems—the growth and processing of which they controlled. That concept has carried forward even today. Thus, when surfing the Internet, you’ll find thousands of videos of people making paper from papyrus, virtually all using thin fresh slices taken from papyrus stems, which have been grown in local botanic gardens or tourist plantations in Cairo or Sicily.
What is left unsaid is that if the green stems are harvested, and thin strips taken and dried, they can be used just as easily to make paper at a later date. This was discovered by the modern papermakers in Cairo and at el-Qaramous in the delta. They found that strips taken from fresh stems could be dried and stored for later use. This allowed them to make paper at their leisure, and it runs completely against the notion that only fresh strips from recently harvested plants would do.
The author examining papyrus strips being dried in Cairo.
The original idea was that the juice of the fresh plant was necessary to bind the strips to one another. Even Professor Lewis was convinced that dry stems were of no use in making papyrus paper. He of course was right, since once the stems have dried out they can’t be easily sliced. The trick, however, is to take the slices while the stem is still fresh, then dry out the slices and save them, not the whole stems.
In reality, much of the paper made for the tourist trade in Egypt today is made from dry strips. It just happens that the fresh white slices shaved from bright-green stems are more photogenic, and to this day there is nothing like a straight razor being wielded by the shaky hand of a TV presenter to attract the attention of viewers. Dried slices are thus made in quantity and often they’re found drying on mats in sunny courtyards. Once dried, they weigh almost nothing and can be baled and conveniently stored until needed or shipped. To make paper at some future date, one need only soak them and they’re ready for use. As mentioned earlier, they are available on the Internet, and thus anyone can now make papyrus paper anywhere in the world.
One caution, when using such dried material, more than the usual pressure is required to ensure good adhesion. The ghosts of the papyrus cartel are probably turning over in their graves as I write this, but it seems possible that early papermakers may have known about this method. If so, it would mean two things: that dry strips could be used to tide the ancient papermaker over during a time of crisis and that the papermaker could have had slices harvested and dried in places where labor and papyrus were abundant and cheap, such as in the Nubian swamps of Sudan. Papyrus grows there as well now, as it did in ancient days. The papermakers could have shipped the dried strips north or anywhere else to supplement local papyrus production, say during times of riots when the harvest and processing of local plants would be difficult.
There is no evidence that dry strips were ever used in this way in the old days. Most historical accounts, like the modern videos on YouTube, consider only fresh material, but the possibility is there that dry strips could have acted as a reserve.
One last point regarding the making of papyrus paper in modern times. It is made in large quantities as a souvenir item for the tourist trade in Egypt in Cairo, and the technique used is that developed by Dr. Hassan Ragab, which he elaborated in his PhD thesis. He found that the main reason for bonding between layers is physical, rather than chemical, and occurs during pressing. Despite evidence of starch adhesives and natural gums, Ragab felt that the partially cut cells of one strip mesh and interlock with cells of another strip. Under pressure these strips are forced to merge, their surfaces forming a dovetail-like join at the cellular level. Upon drying, the interlocked tissues undergo appreciable shrinkage and form an even tighter bond, assuring the adherence of the strips. Consequently, in his technique, the dry strips are preferred. If fresh strips are used they would have to be soaked and rolled several times over in order to squeeze out much of the plant sap. His method therefore depends more on pressure to seal the strips into a final sheet rather than natural glues. If natural sap or juices are present they simply enhance the process. The use of thin strips is one of the major differences between papyrus paper and modern rag paper or the early laid paper of the Chinese, which are both made of pulp, not strips, and perhaps led the Victorian Egyptian scholar, Samuel Sharpe, to refer to papyrus in 1862 as “natural paper” versus pulp paper.5
One of the few places where papyrus grows outside of Africa is Sicily. It is said to have appeared suddenly on the island, but exactly when and how is not clear. Everyone, of course, is ready with a good answer, most often wrapped in some very imaginative material. The earliest theory of its introduction involves King Hiero II of Syracuse, who is said to have received a gift of plants from Ptolemy II. This is a theory that was subsequently rejected by Lewis, who labeled it a “ghost that refused to be laid” because it has no basis in fact.6 Also it is unlikely that Ptolemy II, even in a generous mood, would have given up the rootstock of one of the mainstays of the Egyptian economy. Consider the history of other valuable natural products, like cloves and rubber, all closely guarded in their original areas of production in the tropics. One could be shot or hanged if seeds of these trees were found in one’s possession.
Even if not true, the theory of Ptolemy’s gift remains a very attractive story. However, if I were to take a wild stab at the same speculation, I would choose Archimedes over Hiero II, since Archimedes is the more likely candidate for several reasons. Although he was born in Syracuse in 287 B.C., he went off to receive an early training in Alexandria before returning to live in Sicily from 230 to 212 B.C. He must have already known all about papyrus and the swamps of Egypt, especially those of the delta, and he would certainly have known about paper manufacture and how to organize a papermaking operation outside of Egypt.
Toward the end of his life, together with his friend Hiero II, he played an important role in the development of Syracuse and helped improve defenses during the Roman siege in 214 B.C. At that time, Archimedes applied himself to several of the inventions used to repel the Romans, which helped buy time for the city. The Sicilians held out for two years, but in the end, the Romans took the city and killed Archimedes in the process. The man of “eureka” fame, the same person who invented the water-lifting screw that was so useful for irrigation in Egypt, the catapult that aided in the defense of Syracuse, the pulleys and aerial hooks used to upend ships, and the mirrors used to reflect and concentrate sunlight to the degree that the Sicilians set fire to Roman ships as they sat in the harbor—to such a person the introduction and propagation of papyrus, along with the start-up of a local paper industry, would have been child’s play.
It is also intriguing that Archimedes vigorously kept up old contacts in Egypt, and maintained a significant library that must have used lots of papyrus paper. If and when the thought crossed such an active and agile mind, it would have been an easy matter to arrange for cuttings of the rhizomes to be brought to Syracuse, either with or without the approval of the Ptolemies. Once established, within a few years the plants would be ready for use. But there is no proof, and in fact there is at least one large problem with this version of the “ghost”; historical records show that papyrus was first reported from the Palermo region, and only later in the seventeenth century was it said to have been transplanted to Syracuse and beyond.
Another theory is that there was no need to bring papyrus to Sicily at all. According to Professor Luigi Malerba of Bologna, the papyrus in Sicily is a local variety or subspecies of Cyperus papyrus, and therefore could have established itself in Sicily on its own from papery wind- or bird-borne seeds. Assuming it did, the problem then arises as to why wasn’t it reported earlier in the history of the island.
Another “ghost” concerns the Roman Catholic Church, and the suggestion that its popes had papyrus brought to Sicily in order to have it close to hand. In the old days, the Holy See used considerable amounts of papyrus, and it is said that they wanted to break the monopoly of the infidel Egyptians, and later that of the equally infidel Arabs.
It is interesting that the first indication that papyrus was growing in Sicily came from Pope Gregory the Great, who in a sixth century letter mentioned that it was growing in Palermo in 599 A.D. Much later in 972 A.D., during the Muslim occupation, a merchant from Baghdad named Ibn Hawqal visited the island and described a marshy area near Palermo where “there are swamps full of papyrus . . . Most . . . is twisted into ropes for ships, and a little is used to make paper for the sultan, just enough for his needs.”
From this, Napthali Lewis thought the plant could have been brought to Sicily by Arab merchants. It would then have provided a source of paper later used by the papal and Arab chancelleries. This would have allowed them to continue writing on papyrus long after its manufacture ceased in Egypt. According to one land lease in Sicily, at least one swamp was cultivated and used to produce revenue in the twelfth century, and papyrus was growing in Palermo as late as the sixteenth century.
Today in the Museo del Papiro in Siracusa, Corrado Basile produces a fine grade of paper using locally grown papyrus. He does not employ extensive soaking and rolling, and yet produces a very good quality papyrus paper. In fact, it is said to be as flexible and as smooth as the sheets produced in Egypt, though, according to some, it still lacks the feel of the antique material.7