Papyrus

Overview of Papyrus

Papyrus was a very important invention for the Ancient Egyptian civilization, without it we may have never gotten to where we are technologically. Papyrus was invented during the Archaic era of Egypt(around 3,000 B.C.E.), around 200 years after the unification of Egypt by King Menes. Shortly after being invented, they began to manufacture(2,000 B.C.E.) and sold rolls of papyrus across their land. Papyrus was used for many different things like personal letters, medical documents, and for government documents.

Because papyrus is so versatile, many people and eventually other countries want to buy Papyrus. The process of papyrus making is extensive, taking more than 10 steps. Firstly people harvest Papyrus reeds as shown to the right and then cut the stems into small pieces. Those pieces have their rough outer-coating removed with the soft fiber-like material then being cut or torn into squares about an inch wide. A dozen or more of those pieces are laid side by side to form a layer. Another layer is added perpendicularly to the first. The two layers are then covered with cloth and hammered into one sheet.

Papyrus Uses

As previously stated, Papyrus has many different uses. Despite it seemingly only being able to be used to write stuff down, the things one can write down on it are immense. One of those uses is for medical documents, on the left you can see one such document written in 1550 B.C.E. from Britannica's website. The Papyrus script provided a prescription for asthma written in hieratic script. Papyrus can also be used for things like letters to family/friends and for other things like government documents or literature.

Impacts of Papyrus

Ancient World

Papyrus has impacted the ancient world in many ways such as, economically, socially, and even militarily. In the ancient world papyrus was a very important resource that also happened to be costly because of its production limitations. Because of the limitations of papyrus, it allowed the Egyptian civilization to make a ton of profit causing an economic boom in Ancient Egypt. That economic boom allowed them to make enormous structures like the pyramids. Papyrus also impacted people socially in the ancient world by allowing them to communicate with family and friends from miles away by sending letters. As well as the above, papyrus helped people to solve military conflicts by allowing people to make peace treaties. Not only did papyrus affect economics, social, and military, but also helped many different fields of science and studies from medicinal to engineering.

Modern World

Just as papyrus has impacted the ancient world, papyrus has also impacted the modern world significantly. The invention of papyrus has also allowed us to see into the lives of the ancient world, which would have been lost to time and/or majorly different from the truth. The modern equivilant of papyrus, paper has had major impacts on the modern world which wouldn't have happened without papyrus. “In the U.S., companies spend more than 120 Billion a year on printed forms, most of which outdate themselves within three months’ time,”(Upstate Medical University). Companies would not be able to do this without the invention of papyrus. “More than 70% of today’s businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paperbased records due to fire or flood,”(Upstate Medical University).

Made by: Will D.

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