Special thanks to Jacqueline Flynn at Joëlle Delbourgo Associates, who reviewed and commented on my earlier drafts. Also, I owe a large debt of gratitude to Jessica Case at Pegasus Books for believing in the book and providing encouragement and common-sense advice when it was needed. I’m not an Egyptologist, but several years ago I took a course of video lectures called “The History of Ancient Egypt,” one of the Great Courses produced by the Teaching Company and given by Bob Brier, senior research fellow at Long Island University, which inspired me to take an interest in ancient Egypt. And so thanks to Professor Brier I began a long journey back into the antique history of papyrus.
Helpful sources for the technical and historical information about papyrus paper are Professor Naphtali Lewis’s classic book Papyrus in Classical Antiquity,1 and “Papyrus,” an essay written by Bridget Leach and John Tait.2 Leach, lately retired from the British Museum, is one of the foremost conservators of ancient papyri and Professor Tait is emeritus professor of Egyptology at the University of London. Both provided me with helpful information regarding the existence of intact papyrus scrolls. Another important source of current information on papyrus paper was The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (Oxford University Press, 2011) edited by Roger Bagnall, emeritus professor of ancient history at New York University.
Of great help also was Ancient Libraries, the compendium of everything worth knowing about ancient libraries edited by Jason König, Katerina Oikonomopoulou, and Greg Woolf (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and the most recent information on the Egyptians’ Book of the Dead found in Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt, edited by Foy Scalf (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2017).
In this book I also draw upon my own research on the plant from which ancient paper was made. Most of that work took place in Africa in the 1980s and perhaps would never have amounted to much if I had not gotten a small research grant from the National Geographic Society that was renewed several times and for which I am thankful. I also doubt if this book would have been written without the patience, help, and guidance of my wife, Caroline, to whom I am eternally grateful.
Thanks also to Dr. Ilona Regulski, curator of Egyptian written culture, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum; Professor Willy Clarysse, University of Leuven, Belgium; Dr. Günter Dreyer, German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; Myriam Krutzsch, restorer of Papyrus at the Egyptian Museum, Berlin, Germany; and various fellow members of the American Society of Papyrologists for assistance in the interpretation of the history of papyrus in ancient Egypt. Members also provided answers to questions on the conservation and preservation of rolls and fragments of ancient papyri in particular, Ted Bernhardt, Dr. Thomas Kraus, and Professor Cornelia Roemer. Thanks to Elaine Evans, curator of the McLung Museum at the University of Tennessee for her thoughts on replicas of famous papyri, and Dr. Neal Spencer, keeper of the Deptartment of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum, for his help, suggestions, and access to the Papyrus of Ani and British Museum Study Rooms.
Special thanks go out to the staff at the new Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, for their advice and information on the artful display of facsimile pages of ancient papyrus paper. In particular, the help of Brian Hyland and Bethany Jensen, associate curators of Manuscripts, is appreciated. I also thank Alex van Oss of the Foreign Service Institute, Washington, D.C. for comments on early drafts.
The American Research Center in Egypt helped greatly in funding a speaking tour that allowed me to test out some of my ideas on their members, and they helped promote my work as it applied to ancient Egypt. For their help over the years, I thank Carol Boyer, president of the ARCE Washington, DC, chapter; executive director, Jane Zimmerman; and Robin Young.
Thanks also to Mr. Shady Nabil, tourism manager at the Pharaonic Village, Cairo, Egypt; Dr. Sayyed Hassan, director of the Papyrus Department at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt; Dr. Magdy Mansour, director of conservation, Coptic Museum, Cairo, Egypt; Hossam El Deeb and Wael Mohamed, Restoration Laboratory at The Library in Alexandria, Egypt; Corrado Basile, Siracusa, Italy; and Dr. Abdel Salam Ragab, chairman and CEO of the Pharonic Village, Cairo, Egypt.
Much of the text was written at a small table in Greenberry’s Coffee House, an extraordinary meeting place in McLean, Virginia, where I have been coddled and “refilled” over more years than I care to remember.