Ancient writings on papyrus are invaluable for our knowledge of history. The writings may be literary texts, official records with various dates and names, family records or letters, or lists of ownership. But whatever they contain, they always offer us first-hand knowledge of ancient times.
The first recorded purchase of papyri by a European occurred in 1778. In that year, Egyptian peasants sold a papyrus roll of documents from the year AD 191/192 to a nameless dealer in antiquities, who then looked on while they set fire to 50 or so others simply to enjoy the aromatic smoke. Since that date, an enormous quantity of inscribed papyri has been recovered - and saved.
Making papyrus
Papyrus is believed to have been widely used in Egypt, Greece, the
Middle East and the Roman Empire from the 5th century BC to the 8th
century AD. However, the oldest written papyrus found so far is an
account sheet from the reign of the Egyptian king Assa, dated c.
2600 BC.
Papyrus was made from the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus), which grew almost exclusively in Egypt's Nile delta. Pliny the Elder, who was later killed during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, described papyrus manufacture in his Natural History:
Paper is made from the papyrus plant by separating it with a
needle point into very thin strips as broad as possible... Paper of
whatever grade is fabricated on a board moistened with water from
the Nile: the muddy liquid serves as the bonding force. First, there
is spread flat on the board a layer consisting of strips of papyrus
running vertically, as long as possible, with their ends squared off.
After that, a cross layer completes the construction. Then it is pressed
in presses, and the sheets thus formed are dried in the sun and joined
one to another.
Using papyrus
After the papyrus was processed, it could be used as a writing material. The ink used was a combination of water and plant fluids with lamp black as the pigment. Sometimes a scribe wrote on just one sheet and then rolled it up or folded it. Longer documents were written, at first, in narrow columns on rolls of papyrus. Since big rolls, or scrolls, could be cumbersome - some were as long as 40 metres (130 feet) - papyrus came to be used in the form of the codex, ancestor of the modern book.
Palaeography, the study of ancient writing, involves the analysis
of handwriting (script) thousands of years old - the angles of strokes,
the density of the ink and its composition, and the general style
as compared with other handwriting. Such study enables the detection
of handwriting by different people in the same work. This may mean
that another person took over the task of copying or that someone
else corrected the text. By comparing handwriting styles and other
features, the palaeographer may be able to date a manuscript
Dealing with carbonised papyri
Papyrus is quite durable, but, being organic, it gradually degrades
unless kept in dark conditions free of micro-organisms and at a suitable
humidity. The papyrus scrolls found at the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum
are carbonised - the searing blasts from Vesuvius charred all the
organic compounds and only the most chemically stable material is
now left. The process of carbonisation is not as rapid and mechanically
wearing as open combustion (burning), and so the scrolls had a chance
to survive. In fact, carbonised papyri are often better preserved
than those left to the depredation of light, humidity and micro-organisms!
Because of the unique and fragile nature of papyri, historians, papyrologists and archaeologists prefer to avoid unnecessary physical handling. In the past, the primary method of recording them was simple photography. However, there are now many new means of obtaining, distributing and processing the images. The new technologies - digital cameras, scanners and X-rays, as well as computer enhancement - are especially useful for carbonised papyri, where the lamp-black text is almost indistinguishable from the carbon-black background.
The black writing on a black, rough background of carbonised papyri presents a challenging problem. There are a number of reasons why it is very difficult to extract the characters from the papyrus:
- the minimal contrast between writing and background.
- a messy background texture partly visible through the text.
- unclear character edges.
- cracks
in the material.
Ideally, those working in this field would like to achieve a binary (black and white) image showing only the characters and leaving the background out. In practice, this isn't possible, but the images can be enhanced into a more readable form, and image-processing methods can be used to search for and extract many features.
However, the images should not be modified too much: it is far too easy to create new images that show up as parts of characters. It is also very easy to lose essential information. For the best results, human expertise and intelligence should be combined with powerful computational methods.
Back to Unravelling the Mystery
