Scribes wrote horizontally, as we do, in sections the size of our modern pages, rolled the scrolls up, and stored them in libraries. “There’s the account by Pliny the Elder in his Natural Histories, but it’s a rather vague account.” Additionally, he never actually went to Egypt.Īfter the papyrus paper was produced, pieces were attached to create scrolls up to 65 feet long. “I’m hesitant to suggest that no one else ever used this technology throughout the Roman Empire,” said Price. “This would suggest that when Egypt was under Roman control, the Egyptians were supplying the entire Roman empire with these goods.”Įventually, papyrus was replaced by parchment (animal skin), but the ancient process was reinvented in the 1960s for the tourist trade in Egypt. “Most scholars agree the manufacturing of papyrus was a technology belonging to the ancient Egyptians,” said Robyn Price, a PhD candidate in the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, who helped facilitate the Getty workshop. Papyrus grew on the banks of the Nile, and the resulting paper was exported across ancient Egypt, all the way into ancient Rome. “This allows you to slow down and think about the evolution from nature to the thing that ancient Romans would write on.” “When you learn how labor-intensive this is, you appreciate it more,” said Hogan. She had chosen several tall stalks from the Getty Villa gardens and was now slicing them into thin flat reeds to be soaked and, ultimately, pounded and pressed into paper. She was preparing the plant for an upcoming workshop on the topic.
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