The Pharaoh’s Treasure

As mentioned earlier, the largest change after the Roman takeover of Egypt was privatization; many swamps were owned outright and the production contracted out as the swamps became managed resources like any other agricultural land. Three contracts reviewed by Napthali Lewis exist from Roman times and show how papyrus was managed as a crop.

The first was an application from a man named Harthotes in 26 A.D. to harvest papyrus in the Fayum region. The interesting thing about this request is that Harthotes was seeking permission to harvest from a wild swamp, a drymos.

images — MAP 3: The Great Swamp in the Fayum Region (after original map from Univ. Leuven Fayum Project, courtesy of Prof. Willy Clarysse).

Harthotes if successful, would have access to an enormous wetland called the Great Swamp (Map 3). It was twenty miles long and stretched from the ancient Egyptian town of Philoteris northeast to the village of Theoxenis. Since it was about a half mile wide, it amounted to ten square miles or 6,400 acres. His application reads as follows:¹

From: Harthotes, son of Marres.

To: Aphrodisius, son of Zoilus, contractor of the papyrus holdings of Julia Augusta and the children of Germanicus Caesar.

If I am granted the concession to gather papyrus from the vicinity of Theoxenis to the borders of Philoteris—i.e. reeds and papyrus from the drymos—and weave mats and sell them in any villages of the nome I choose for (the remainder of) the 12th year of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, I undertake to pay four silver drachmas and fifteen obols together with the customary expenses, additional charges, and receipt fees, all of which I will pay in three instalments, in Epeiph, Mesore, and the month of Sebastos next year,* if you see fit to grant me the concession on the foregoing terms.

Farewell.

Year 12 of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus.

Lewis pointed out that this is a remarkable document on its own, regardless of the papyrus harvest, in that it gives evidence of an estate belonging to members of the imperial family (the children of the deceased Germanicus). For the economic history of Roman Egypt and the Roman empire it documents one of the family’s sources of income. Germanicus was a major player among the Roman elite. He was adopted by his paternal uncle, Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus as Roman emperor a decade later. He was also the maternal grandfather of Nero. His children, who are indicated as the owners of the Great Swamp included Caligula, Emperor of Rome, and Agrippina the Younger, Empress of Rome. Another owner of the Swamp was Julia Augusta, who is none other than Livia, the widow of Augustus. She was given the name Julia on the death of her husband and was deified by her grandson Claudius, of whom we will hear more in the next chapter.

Another significant detail is the small sum of money offered for the right to gather wild-growing reeds and papyrus stalks over a twenty-mile stretch of marshland. Four silver drachma and fifteen obols would be about fifty-eight dollars today. Presumably there were other swamps in the Fayum region that were used by the papermakers, who paid much more for the right to harvest, as we will see in the other contracts.

The two other contracts describe the workings of plantations, one from 14 B.C. and a later one from 5 B.C. They deal with swamps in the delta that were kept as plantations and illustrate the difference between protected and cosseted swamps and those left in the wild state. The stems of the protected plant were generally superior as well as homogeneous in size. In order to insure that plant stems from the plantations remained in premium condition, Lewis noted that “a whole battery of provisions is clearly aimed at maintaining the productivity of the plantation and the quality of the product. Thus, the lessees are obliged to cultivate the plantation in its entirety, neglecting no part of it. Again, they may not sublet but must see to the operation themselves. They must use the proper tools and methods, and must maintain the waterways against blockage or deterioration.” Pasturing and watering of animals, common in the wild swamps, was not permitted in the plantations, since the animals would inevitably trample the tall stalks and probably eat the young shoots.

Under the contract, “Woven products could be made from the wild growth . . . but the prime plants . . . destined no doubt for paper-making, were too valuable to be wasted on such inferior uses . . . the bulk of the production was to be cultivated to maturity and harvested at full growth.”

He also found the contracts interesting because of the clauses fixing the going rate for hired labor, which was made up of free men rather than slaves, thus eliminating competition for manpower. Lewis pointed out that the paper factories were able to operate twelve months a year because the papyrus plant was harvested year-round. Contracts showed that harvest went on in one case from June to August; in another, daily from June to November; while the lessees of another plantation agreed to pay a rent of 250 drachmas a month in the six months from September to February ($2,250 in modern terms), and more than double that amount in the other six months.

What did they get for their money? In the earlier contract a husband and wife, lessees of a helos papyrikon, a proper plantation, acknowledge a loan of 200 drachmas ($1,800) to be repaid a drachma a day; and in lieu of interest on the loan they would deliver to the owner each day, and sell to him at less than the market price, a portion of their daily harvest of papyrus stalks, up to a six-month total of 20,000 one-armful loads and 3,500 six-armful loads of papyrus stalks. This averages out to be some 200 sizeable bundles of stalks daily! The owners could then resell or use this papyrus “interest” at a large profit.

In harvesting, as depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs, the stalks were pulled up from the rooted base and tied into sheaves, which people then carried away on their backs or in boats. Under the terms of the contracts, Lewis noted that at the end of the first century B.C. papyrus stalks were delivered and marketed in units designated as one-armful and six-armful loads, “a detail which suggests very strongly that the techniques and practices of papyrus harvesting had changed little if at all through the ages.”

As to the total harvest, since the above 200 bundles from the contracted swamp were only about 10 percent, a rough estimate of what was taken from the swamp daily would be about 2,000 bundles or about eight tons dry weight. And this was only one of many swamps throughout the country.

In combination, these three documents tell us that from March onward, the yield of papyrus stalks increased, with June through August constituting the major harvest period of the year. The explanation lies, no doubt, in the hydrology of the region. From September to March, the floodwaters of the Nile would be at their highest levels and access to the plants would be more difficult, requiring the use of boats.

Obviously all of the management and production efforts by the Romans were done for a purpose, to provide papyrus paper for a market that continued to expand throughout their empire and beyond. Luckily, they were dealing with a very productive plant.²

Professional Papers of All Types and for All Reasons

The amount of paper made from this production was enormous, reaching a peak during the Roman era. By that time, the copying and acquisition of manuscripts went on at major centers of learning. In Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II great importance was assigned to the collection of scrolls for the Royal Library, but even this massive undertaking represented only a small portion of documents produced in the world. Under the Ptolemies, books were possibly produced for export along with other goods,³ and during all of this, some papyrus paper was recycled. Typically, when a scroll was used for the first time, it was written on using the inner surface, or the recto. Once it was no longer needed and not earmarked for the rubbish heap, the scroll could be traded in for one reason or another, or it could be used again by writing on the outside, or the verso. If gums or resin smoke had been incorporated into the ink, the original writing was left because it could only be erased with difficulty. Scraping or scratching the surface could not be done easily without ripping or weakening the paper. One advantage of parchment was that its tougher sheets could be scraped with impunity, which is why it came to be used as palimpsests for school lessons in the Middle Ages, these were the forerunners of the schoolboy slate.

But quite often, the ink used on papyrus was washable, which made the job easier and brings up an interesting point. There was an early belief that drinking the water or beer used to wash away the writing would impart that same knowledge to the drinker! The proof of this theory lies in the story of an early Egyptian prince, who wrote out a copy of the Book of Magic by the god Thoth. He then washed the pages with beer, drank the book and captured the magic, or so we are told by the Scottish Egyptologist Reverend James Baikie.⁴ In those days, “digesting” a book obviously had a direct meaning.

Even after being written on several times over, old papyrus paper was still in demand for making “cartonnage,” a papier-mâché-like material used for making cases, small boxes, or even mummy cases and funereal masks. Since the paper was softened but still used as sheets, not pulped as in papier-mâché, whole sheets could be recovered by soaking the cartonnage and then teasing it apart.

The most famous of these sheets so far are those recovered by Sir Flinders Petrie while digging among Ptolemaic tombs at Gurob in 1889–90. He found mummy wrappings, breast-pieces, casings, and even sandals molded out of previously inscribed papyrus paper. From these items he retrieved, many were important papyri. Eventually published as the “Flinders Petrie Papyri,” they were dated from 250–225 B.C. and proved to be of great interest, for they represented some of the oldest Greek manuscripts known up to that time.⁵ Mostly an assortment of legal and official documents, wills, official correspondences, accounts and private letters, they also included literary works. Fragments containing Plato’s Phaedo, lost portions of the last act of a Euripides play, Antiope, and even fragments from the Iliad of Homer. They fascinated the public and also opened the eyes of other Egyptologists to a previously untapped source of ancient papyri.

The practice of making papyrus paper cartonnage continued through the Roman period when the style of mummy decoration changed and linen again became the preferred medium, especially for headpieces.

In the end many scrolls, loose pages, and scraps eventually found their way to the town dump. Some were uncovered in the heaps of papyri found in 1897–1907 by Grenfell and Hunt. It is estimated that over 70 percent of all the literary papyri so far discovered came from their efforts. But, of the many thousands excavated, only about 10 percent were literary, the remainder were documents, codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census returns, tax assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters, which, though humble, have helped generations-worth of scholars piece together the social fabric of ancient Egypt and the early Roman Empire. This proves the adage that even the humblest receipt or letter has value when it is millennia old! It goes from garbage to priceless overnight.