ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to those who reviewed earlier drafts, in particular Patrick Denny of London, who also provided photographs of papyrus in the Sudd, and Anne Sandlund for providing so many helpful suggestions on how to write a readable book. I owe a large debt of gratitude to Jacqueline Flynn at Joelle Delbourgo Associates for believing in the book, and Jessica Case at Pegasus for providing encouragement and common-sense advice when it was needed.

I doubt if my research in Africa would ever 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 my former colleagues in Africa for helping me get my start in the swamps: Keith Thompson and Tomi Petr, formerly with Makerere University, Uganda; Prof. Stephen Njuguna, formerly Dean of the School of Environmental Studies; Prof. Alex Njue, Professor of Botany, Kenyatta University; Dr. Frank Muthuri, Nairobi, Kenya; Prof. Ken Mavuti, Professor of Zoology, University of Nairobi, Kenya; “Mac” Litterick, University of Nairobi; John Melack and Sally McIntyre at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Mike Jones, Trinity College, Dublin.

Thanks to Dr. Abdel Salam Ragab, Chairman and CEO of the Pharaonic Village, Cairo; Dr. Sayyed Hassan, Director of Papyrus Dept., Egyptian Museum, Cairo; Dr. Magdy Mansour, Director of Conservation, Coptic Museum, Cairo; Hossam El Deeb, Restoration Laboratory, The Library, Alexandria, Egypt; Dr. Ksenija Borojevic, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston; Dr. Jean-Daniel Stanley, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Sarah Higgins, Lake Naivasha, Kenya; Ed Morrison and David Harper from the Department of Biology, University of Leicester, UK; Dr. Didi Kaplan, Huleh Nature Reserve, Israel; Dr. Doron Markel, Lake Kinneret and Agmon Lake, Israel; Dr. Yossi Leshem, Professor of Ornithology, Tel Aviv University; Robert Brecht, ITC, Netherlands; Corrado Basile, Siracusa, Italy; David Hambright, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma; and Dr. Abe Krikorian and Eugene Taylor for their early help in photographing swamps in Africa.

Thanks also to Dr. Ilona Regulski at the Freie Universität, Berlin; Prof. Willy Clarysse, Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium; Dr. Günter Dreyer, German Archaeological Institute, Cairo; and various fellow members of the American Society of Papyrologists for assistance in the interpretation of the history of papyrus in ancient Egypt, in particular Ted Bernhardt, Dr. Thomas Kraus, and Prof. 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, Assistant Keeper (Curator) of the Dept. of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum, for his help and suggestions and access to the Papyrus of Ani and British Museum Study Rooms.

Figures and photo credits: Quite a few images were seen or acquired first on the Commons at Wikimedia (www.wikipedia.org). Thanks to Samuel Manning for permission to use two copyrighted drawings, one of a papyrus boat under sail and another of one under construction, and to Georg Petersen at www.hydroc.de for the aerial photo of Sudd, Steve Johnson at SAREP, Botswana, for one of the Okavango, and Yossi Leshem for use of the bird migration map. Various line drawings were re-fashioned after those of D. Jones, A. Badawy, G. Reeder, M. Herb, A. Erman, O. Macleod, E. von Rosen, W. Budge, N. de Garis Davies, and Wikipedia.