The Writing Surface

How Papyrus Was Made

From a reed in the marshes of the Nile to the pages of the earliest Christian books: the plant, the process, the ink, and the folded sheets that became the codex.

View the Presentation The Bifolium

I The Plant

A Reed of the Nile

Papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) is a tall sedge that once grew in dense thickets along the marshes of the Nile, above all in the Delta of Lower Egypt.

Its smooth, three-sided stems rise to around four or five metres, crowned by a spray of fine green threads. Egyptians used the plant for boats, rope, sandals and mats, but its most enduring use was as a writing surface. For centuries Egypt supplied papyrus to the whole Mediterranean world, and it remained the everyday material of letters, contracts, literature and Scripture.

Its name lives on in our language: the English word paper comes from papyrus, and the Greek biblos, a word for papyrus and for a book, stands behind biblion, and so behind the word Bible.

Papyrus plants growing wild along the banks of the Nile in Uganda — Papyrus growing wild along the banks of the Nile in Uganda. Photo: Michael Shade · public domain

II The Process

From Stem to Sheet

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder left the fullest ancient description of papyrus-making (Natural History, Book 13). Step through the presentation, open any step to read more, or expand it to fill the screen.

Men gathering papyrus. Facsimile of a painting in the tomb of Puyemre at Thebes, c. 1479–1458 BC. Facsimile by Hugh R. Hopgood · The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 1

Harvest the stems

Tall stems were cut from the marshes and trimmed into manageable lengths while still fresh and moist.

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Papyrus grew in shallow water, and harvesters waded or poled into the thickets to cut it. Egyptian tomb paintings show the stems bundled and carried away on men’s backs.
Pliny records that the best writing material came from the centre of the stem, and that papyrus sheets were sold in recognised grades of quality.
Men splitting papyrus stems. Facsimile of a painting in the tomb of Puyemre at Thebes. Facsimile by Hugh R. Hopgood · The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 2

Peel and slice

The tough green rind was stripped away, and the soft white pith inside was cut lengthwise into long, thin strips.

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The pith of the triangular stem is pale and spongy. Cut while fresh, it yields strips that are flexible and slightly sticky, the quality that allows them to bond into a single sheet.
The width and thinness of the strips helped decide the fineness of the finished sheet.
An ancient papyrus sheet from Thebes, 664–332 BC. The individual strips that make up the sheet can still be seen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 3

Lay two layers

Strips were laid side by side on a flat surface, then a second layer was laid across them at a right angle.

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Pliny describes the work being done on a board moistened with Nile water. He believed the muddy water acted as a glue; modern experiments suggest the pith’s own sap does the binding.
Because the two layers cross, every sheet has one face with horizontal fibres and one with vertical fibres, a detail scholars still use when studying manuscripts.
Drawing: the crossed layers are beaten with a mallet and pressed flat on a board.

Step 4

Press into one sheet

The two layers were pressed or beaten until they bonded into a single sheet, held together without any added glue.

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Pressing squeezed out water and drew the crossed strips tightly together. Once bonded, the sheet behaves as a single surface, strong enough to roll, fold and write upon.
A finished papyrus sheet. The faint grid is the two crossed layers of strips. Photo: B. Simpson · public domain

Step 5

Dry in the sun

The pressed sheet was left to dry in the sun, then trimmed to size.

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Pliny says the sheets were dried in the sun and then sorted by quality, the best kept for fine writing and the coarsest used for wrapping.
Held up to the light, a good sheet still shows the lattice of its two crossed layers, the same pattern visible on ancient manuscripts today.
A wooden papyrus burnisher from a tomb at Thebes, about 1800–1500 BC or later. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 6

Polish smooth

The dry sheet was rubbed smooth so the pen would glide across it and the ink would not spread into the fibres.

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Pliny mentions smoothing papyrus with a piece of ivory or a shell. Simple wooden tools like the one shown here have been found in Egyptian tombs.
A well polished sheet took ink cleanly, but polishing too hard could leave the surface less able to hold it.
A stack of papyrus sheets in our workshop, ready for a new replica. Sacred Text Replicas

Step 7

Join into a roll

Finished sheets, called kollēmata, were pasted edge to edge into a roll, according to Pliny usually no more than twenty sheets long. For a codex, sheets were instead folded into pages.

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Each join was smoothed so well that a scribe could write straight across it. A roll was read by unrolling it with one hand and rolling it up with the other, a column at a time.
Early Christians increasingly preferred the codex, made of folded sheets stacked and sewn together, the ancestor of the modern book.
Haremhab shown as a royal scribe, with a papyrus unrolled across his lap. Memphis, about 1328–1314 BC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 8

Write with reed and ink

A scribe wrote with a reed pen dipped in black ink, usually first on the side whose fibres run horizontally.

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Greek manuscripts of the New Testament period were usually written in scriptio continua, with no spaces between words and little punctuation. Lines were kept straight by the run of the fibres themselves.
In a roll, the inner face with horizontal fibres carried the text; in a codex, both faces were written.
Wooden models of scribes keeping the grain accounts, from the tomb of Meketre at Thebes, about 1981–1975 BC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0)

Step 9

The scribe’s craft

Writing was a trained profession. Scribes kept accounts, copied texts and wrote letters for others, and the craft of reed, ink and papyrus was passed down for thousands of years.

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By the time the first Christian manuscripts were copied, papyrus had been in use in Egypt for some three thousand years. Many of our earliest New Testament witnesses, among them Papyrus 52, Papyrus 46 and Papyrus 66, were found in Egypt, where the dry climate preserved them.

III Ink & Pen

Putting Words on the Page

An Egyptian scribe's palette with its brushes — An Egyptian scribe’s palette and brushes, 664–332 BC. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Carbon ink

The standard black ink of the period was made from soot, mixed with gum arabic and water. It was often kept as a dried cake and moistened before use. It sat on the surface of the fibres, so a fresh mistake could be wiped away with a damp sponge.

Reed pens from Roman-period Egypt. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The reed pen

Greek scribes wrote with the kalamos, a reed cut to a point and split at the tip like a nib. Re-cut as it wore down, it gave the steady, rounded letters seen in many early biblical manuscripts.

Red ink & later inks

Red ink, made from mineral pigments, was sometimes used for headings and markers. In later centuries iron-gall ink, which bites into the writing surface, became widespread, especially on parchment.

When John writes, “I would rather not use paper and ink” (2 John 12), the Greek word translated “paper” is chartēs: a sheet of papyrus.

IV From Sheet to Book

Recto, Verso & the Bifolium

Early Christians favoured the codex, the ancestor of the modern book. Understanding how one was assembled explains much about the fragments that survive.

One sheet

A single papyrus sheet, its horizontal fibres on top. The dotted line marks the fold.
Folded: a bifolium

Folded in half, the sheet becomes a bifolium: two leaves, giving four pages, front and back.
Nested: a quire

Several bifolia nested together and sewn through the fold form a quire, or gathering.

Reading the fibres

The side of a sheet whose fibres run horizontally is called the recto; the side with vertical fibres is the verso. In a roll, scribes normally wrote on the recto, the inside face. In a codex both sides carry text, and because a folded sheet shows horizontal fibres on one face and vertical on the other, the fibre direction helps scholars work out where a loose leaf once sat.

An example: Papyrus 46

Papyrus 46, the early codex of Paul’s letters, was made as a single quire of folded sheets. Because every leaf is half of a bifolium, a leaf from near the front of the book was joined to a leaf from near the back. Eighty-six of its leaves survive today, divided between the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and the University of Michigan. Each of our front-and-back P46 replicas reproduces one of these leaves, recto and verso.

A bifolium of Papyrus 46: folio 15 with Romans 11 joined to folio 90 with Philippians 4 and Colossians 1, Chester Beatty Library — A bifolium of Papyrus 46. Folio 15 (Romans 11) and folio 90 (Philippians 4 – Colossians 1) were written on one folded sheet, so a page near the front of the book faces a page near the back. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, c. AD 200.

A leaf of Papyrus 46 at the University of Michigan, preserving 2 Corinthians 11:33–12:9.

Kollēma: A single sheet within a papyrus roll.
Recto: The face with horizontal fibres; the front of a leaf.
Verso: The face with vertical fibres; the back of a leaf.
Bifolium: One sheet folded in half to make two leaves and four pages.
Quire: A gathering of nested bifolia, sewn through the fold.
Codex: A book of folded, bound leaves rather than a roll.

From Our Workshop

The Craft Today

Every replica begins with sheets like these, and is worked by hand from the first cut to the final frame.

Working the leaf
Detail under the lamp
A finished leaf
Framed for display

Our Replicas

The Same Material, Two Thousand Years Later

Our replicas return these early manuscripts to the kind of surface they were first written on, so you can see Scripture as its first readers did.

See Our Process From Papyrus to Modern Bibles

Image credits

Men gathering papyrus and Men splitting papyrus: facsimiles by Hugh R. Hopgood of paintings in the tomb of Puyemre, Thebes. Papyrus sheet; papyrus burnisher; Haremhab as a Scribe of the King; Scribes from Meketre’s Model Granary; scribe’s palette and brushes; reed pens from Roman Egypt: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0).

Papyrus along the Nile in Uganda: Michael Shade, public domain. Finished papyrus sheet: B. Simpson, public domain. Both via Wikimedia Commons. Drawings: Sacred Text Replicas.

Papyrus 46: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (BP II ff. 15 & 90), and the University of Michigan Papyrology Collection. All other photographs: Sacred Text Replicas.

"Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink."
2 JOHN 12

How Papyrus Was Made

A Reed of the Nile

From Stem to Sheet

Harvest the stems

Peel and slice

Lay two layers

Press into one sheet

Dry in the sun

Polish smooth

Join into a roll

Write with reed and ink

The scribe’s craft