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Papyrus   Listen
noun
Papyrus  n.  (pl. papyri)  
1.
(Bot.) A tall rushlike plant (Cyperus Papyrus) of the Sedge family, formerly growing in Egypt, and now found in Abyssinia, Syria, Sicily, etc. The stem is triangular and about an inch thick.
2.
The material upon which the ancient Egyptians wrote. It was formed by cutting the stem of the plant into thin longitudinal slices, which were gummed together and pressed.
3.
A manuscript written on papyrus; esp., pl., written scrolls made of papyrus; as, the papyri of Egypt or Herculaneum.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Papyrus" Quotes from Famous Books



... spills what he overheard at lunch. Seems he was out with a friend who took him to the Papyrus Club, which is where a lot of these young hicks from the different book publishin' houses get together noon-times; not Mr. Harper, or Mr. Scribner, or Mr. Dutton, but the heads of departments, assistant editors, floor salesmen ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... Lake Chad use clumsy skiffs eighteen feet long, made of hollow reeds tied into bundles and then lashed together in a way to form a slight cavity on top.[533] In the earliest period of Egyptian history this type of boat with slight variations was used in the papyrus marshes of the Nile,[534] and it reappears as the ambatch boat which Schweinfurth observed on the upper White Nile.[535] It is in use far away among the Sayads or Fowlers, who inhabit the reed-grown rim of the Sistan Lake in arid Persia.[536] As the Peruvian balsa, it has been the regular means ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... the reading of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, we pass on to read a magic papyrus, our first impression is that we have stepped from one end of the intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the systematic order or severe method that distinguish the work of the scholar of Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as chimerical ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... ideals and dreams of Abraham and Moses had not yet been fulfilled. The common people had had little opportunity for happiness or growth in knowledge and goodness. But the southern kingdom still existed. And many a disciple of Hosea, some of them carrying scraps and rolls of papyrus on which his sayings were copied, fled to Jerusalem, and there sowed the seed of his great message of a God not only of justice ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... in the medical and religious literature. The funerary cult of Khufu and Khafr[e] was practised under the twenty-sixth dynasty, when so much that had fallen into disuse and been forgotten was revived. Khufu is a leading figure in an ancient Egyptian story (Papyrus Westcar), but it is unfortunately incomplete. He was the founder of the fourth dynasty, and was probably born in Middle Egypt near Beni Hasan, in a town afterwards known as "Khufu's Nurse," but was connected with the Memphite third dynasty. Two tablets at the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... the earth, our planet was forced out of its orbit, according to Worlds in Collision. For a time, the world was on the brink of destruction. Quoting many authentic ancient records, including the Quich manuscript of the Mayas, the Ipuwer papyrus of the Egyptians, and the Visiddhi-Magga of the Buddhists, Dr. Velikovsky describes the cataclysm that took place. "The face of the earth changed," he writes in his book. The details, reinforced by the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, tell of tremendous ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... shut in her rouge pot. [He has been strutting about. Suddenly he sits down crushing a roll of papyrus. He takes it up and in utter disgust reads.] "The perfect hip, its development and permanence." Bah! [He flings it to the floor.] I've done what I had to do, and Gods grant the bait may be sweet ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... ashes from seven different fireplaces; seven bits of pitch from seven ships, one piece from each; seven scrapings of dust from as many separate doorways; seven cummin seeds; seven hairs from the lower jaw of a dog and tie them upon the throat with a papyrus fibre. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... use of vellum is an indication that the MSS. must be of some antiquity. The word "paper" is derived from papyrus, the most ancient material for writing, if we except the rocks used for runes, or the wood for oghams. Papyrus, the pith of a reed, was used until the discovery of parchment, about 190 B.C. A MS. of the Antiquities of Josephus on papyrus, was among the treasures seized by ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... derives its name from the ancient Greek word "papyrus," the name of the material used in ancient times for writing purposes, and manufactured by the Egyptians from the papyrus plant, and which was, up to the eighth century, the best-known writing material. Probably the earliest manufacturers of paper were the Chinese, who used the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... self-expression. As Poor Richard put it, "Well done is better than well said," and so long as great things are pressing to be done, great men will do their writing on the page of history, and not on papyrus, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... bug on the stump of a pine,—for it the wind shifts and the sun breaks through the clouds. In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man. There is papyrus by the river-side, and rushes for light, and the goose only flies overhead, ages before the studious are born or letters invented, and that literature which the former suggest, and even from the first have rudely served, it may be man does not yet use them to express. Nature is prepared ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... room of the library contains not only its priceless MSS., but a famous mummy which the experts put at anything from 2200 to 3500 years old. Another precious possession is a Buddhist ritual on papyrus, which an Armenian wandering in Madras discovered and secured. The earliest manuscript dates from the twelfth century. In a central case are illuminated books and some beautiful bindings; and I must put on record ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... list. It is doubtless all correct,' said Sergius, waving the papyrus aside. 'Go, now, and bring ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... time when cattle were the main circulating medium. In 'library' we preserve the fact that books were once written on the bark (liber) of trees; in 'volume' that they were mostly rolls; in 'paper,' that the Egyptian papyrus, 'the paper-reeds by the brooks,' furnished at one time the ordinary material ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... Thin columns of blue smoke drifted up here and there between the close-set tents, and the sibilant wearing of stone-mills, as they ground the wheat, was heard in many households. The nutty aroma of parching lentils, and the savor of roasting papyrus root and garlic told the stage of the morning meal. The strong-armed women, rich brown in tint from the ardent sun, crowned with coil upon coil of heavy hair, bent over the pungent fires. Sturdy children, innocent of raiment, went hither and thither, bearing well filled skins of water. Apart ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... shred. Docket, earlier dogget, is from an old Italian diminutive of doga, cask-stave, which meant a bendlet in heraldry. Schedule is a diminutive of Lat. scheda, "a scrowe" (Cooper), properly a strip of papyrus. Ger. Zettel, bill, ticket, is the same word. Thus all these words, more or less kindred in meaning, can be reduced to the primitive ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... neither bowed nor weak, but bore himself with the uprightness and vigour of a man in his prime. When at home, this man seemed to occupy his time chiefly in gathering firewood, cooking food, sleeping, and reading in a small roll of Egyptian papyrus which he carried constantly ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... and Books Made Permanent Records.—At first all records were made by pen, pencil, or stylus, and manuscripts were represented on papyrus paper or parchment, and could only be duplicated by copying. In Alexandria before the Christian era one could buy a copy of the manuscript of a great author, but it was at a high price. It finally became customary for monks, in their secluded retreats, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... this pair, Higgs, looking up from the papyrus or whatever it might be that he was reading (I gathered later that he had spent the afternoon in unrolling a mummy, and was studying its spoils), caught sight of me standing in ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... Look, I will show you their journeyings on this scroll and you shall see where they eat you up yonder, yes, yonder over the Valley of dead Kings, though twenty years and more must go by ere then, and take this for your comfort, during those years you shine alone," and he began to unfold a papyrus roll. ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... only teachers. While chief attention was given to the education of boys, girls also received some instruction. The principal subjects taught in the lowest caste were writing and mathematics. The papyrus plant, found along the Nile, furnished a material on which writing was practiced. In arithmetic we find an anticipation of modern principles in the concrete methods employed. Religious instruction was also given. Bodily exercise was severe, running being a favorite pastime. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... advice of the god of wisdom she took refuge in the papyrus swamps of the Delta. Seven scorpions accompanied her in her flight. One evening when she was weary she came to the house of a woman, who, alarmed at the sight of the scorpions, shut the door in her face. Then one of the scorpions crept under the door and stung the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... better face the tempests of the world? What did he not know about birds? He had carried them in his arms and nurtured them in his bosom for a thousand years. Even his old coat, with all its rents and patches—what roll of papyrus was ever so crowded with the secrets of knowledge? The august antiquarian! The old king! Can you imagine a funeral urn too noble for his ashes? But to what base uses, Georgiana! He will not keep the wind ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... accession, and who reigned for seventeen years. He was a virtuous and well-intentioned prince, who instituted many internal reforms, and during his reign a new writing paper was invented, which is supposed to have been identical with the papyrus of Egypt. But the reign of Hoti is rendered illustrious by the remarkable military achievements of Panchow. The success of that general in his operations with the Huns has already been referred to, and he at last formed a deliberate plan for driving them away from the Chinese frontier. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... plain, and into the woods beyond. A wide, beaten track took them through, as though they walked in a lofty tunnel with green walls through which one could look, but beyond which one might not pass. Then out into the sunlight again, skirting a swamp of plumed papyrus with many waterfowl, and swarms of insects, and birds wheeling swiftly catching the insects, and other larger birds soaring grandly above on the watch-out for what might chance. This swamp was like a green river flowing bank high between the ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... we passed to the next alcove, the shelves of which were burdened with ancient volumes and with those rolls of papyrus in which was treasured up the eldest wisdom of the earth. Perhaps the most valuable work in the collection, to a bibliomaniac, was the Book of Hermes. For my part, however, I would have given a higher price for those six of the Sibyl's books which Tarquin refused to purchase, and ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... widely out over the race. This is the primary value of education: it is not that books are important, but that men are—the men who have swayed history—and books tell of such men. Not the library is inspirational, but the life-spirit of mankind, bound up in even dusty papyrus-rolls, or set on clay-tablets of four thousand years ago. He who would serve his times politically must first understand, so far as may ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... "Here is a papyrus on which the characters are so badly traced that they are indecipherable. How ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... Romans were not interested in "anything foreign" and did not inquire into the origin of these queer figures which covered the walls of the temples and the walls of the palaces and endless reams of flat sheets made out of the papyrus reed. The last of the Egyptian priests who had understood the holy art of making such pictures had died several years before. Egypt deprived of its independence had become a store-house filled with important historical documents which no one could decipher and which were of no earthly ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... girdles, stomachers, and anklets, all of diamond and emerald. Our slaves may be counted by thousands, and they come from all parts of the world. Everything rare and precious is brought to Rome: the gum of Arabia, the nard of Assyria, the papyrus of Egypt, the citron-wood of Mauretania, the bronze of AEgina, the pearls of Britain, the cloth of gold of Phrygia, the fine webs of Cos, the embroidery of Babylon, the silks of Persia, the lion-skins ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... floats on the mirror of the waters, and among the papyrus reeds by the shore water-fowl innumerable build their nests. Between the river and the mountain-range lie fields, which after the seed-time are of a shining blue-green, and towards the time of harvest glow like gold. Near the brooks and water-wheels here and there stands ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the land are traces of the children of Israel, many of whose descendants still remain in the land of Goshen, and in every instance where fresh discovery has thrown light upon the subject the independent record of history found in hieroglyph or papyrus confirms the Bible narrative, so that we may be quite sure when we read these old stories that they are not merely legends, open to doubt, but are the true histories ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... generally recognised that an impulse not wholly dissimilar also moved prophetic or poetic minds among other races, such, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Aryan conquerors of India, to inscribe on papyrus or stone, or brick or palm-leaf, the results of experience as interpreted by free imagination, traditional habits of thought, and limited knowledge. Of this ancient literature a considerable part is taken up by the mysteries apparently involved in life, conduct, and death. Most notably is this the ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... Thalia, "shut up day and night with that old papyrus of St. Luke and Paul's Epistles. One may have too much ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... lowest subdivision of the astral plane also this physical world of ours may be said to be the background, though what is seen is only a distorted and partial view of it, since all that is light and good and beautiful seems invisible. It was thus described four thousand years ago in the Egyptian papyrus of the Scribe Ani: "What manner of place is this unto which I have come? It hath no water, it hath no air; it is deep, unfathomable; it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly about therein; in it a man may not live in quietness ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... himself, and so editors were always pestering him to write leaderettes about them. He got over the difficulty by leaving blanks for the eulogistic adjectives, which the editors had to fill in. As thus: "Mr. Theophilus Rogers, the —— savant, has unearthed another papyrus in Asia Minor which throws a flood of light on the primitive seismology of Syria." Once a careless editor forgot to fill in the lacuna, and the paper lost a lot of subscribers by reason of its improper language, whilst the friends of Theophilus wanted him to bring an action for ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... colourings of the Egyptians are described in the warmest terms of admiration. The most charming are undoubtedly those on the tombs and temples: others of less merit have been found on the cases and cloths of mummies, and on papyrus rolls; but it is to the patterns on the walls and ceilings of their houses that they seem to have been most partial, and paid the most attention. The ordinary colours employed by them were red, yellow, green, and blue. Of the last there were two tints; black also ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... had been engaged in conversation with his colleague and medical attendant, Dr. Johann Hofmeier, to a late hour of the night. During all this time he seemed cheerful, and spoke quite lucidly on various topics. In particular, he exhibited to his colleague a curious strip of what looked like ancient papyrus, on which were traced certain grotesque and apparently meaningless figures. This, he said, he had found some days before on the bed of a poor woman in one of the horribly low quarters that surround Berlin, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... Arethusa, recently rescued from the washerwomen of Syracuse, is shut off from the Great Harbour by a wall and planted with papyrus. Taste has not been displayed in the bear-pit architecture ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... in thought, seated by the open window, with the double roll of a volume in his hands, reading slowly line by line of the old papyrus Romano-Grecian writings of one of the philosophers, and, as he came to each line's end, it slowly disappeared beneath the upper roll, while the nether was opened out to leave the next line ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... or northern bank behind the projection, a slip of morass backed by swamps and thick growths, chiefly bombax, palm and acacia, lignum vitae, the mammee-apple and the cork-tree, palmyra, pandanus, and groves of papyrus. Low and deeply flooded during the rains, the place would be fatal without the sea-breeze; as it is, the air is exceedingly unwholesome. There is no quay, the canoe must act gondola; the wharf ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... parchment, or papyrus, having been first polished for use, and then rubbed as clean as possible, to be used a second time.]—the name and the thing—are at least as old as Cicero. In one of his letters he banters his friend Trebatius for writing to him on a palimpsest,[Footnote: In palimpsesto.] ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... on Epicurus are Usener's Epicurea, containing the Life from Diog. Laert., fragments and introduction: the papyrus fragments of Philodemus in Volumina Herculanensia; Diogenes of Oenoanda (text by William, Teubner, 1907); the commentaries on Lucretius ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... a hollow cylinder of hardened copper, I brought it to America and gave it to a machinist to open. He ruined two dozen finely-tempered saws in the job, which I cheerfully settled for, as the cylinder contained a papyrus roll of manuscript ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... motion which I have never seen anything like—for he seemed less to be walking than to be impelled from behind like a perambulator, or dragged from in front like a canal-boat—he advanced to the table, where lay some pieces of a white substance like papyrus, all of the same size and oblong shape, which showed on their surfaces, some of them antique-looking figures and faces curiously stained, and others red and black dots, arranged, as it seemed to me, in some sort of design, although at first sight they looked ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... it to be. The great library was in a building separate from the palace. It was admirably lighted from without, and its nature was apparent the moment we were led into it. The "books" were long scrolls, which might have been taken for parchment or papyrus, and the characters written on them resembled those of the Chinese language, but worked out in exquisite colors, which might themselves have had a meaning. The rolls were kept in proper receptacles under the charge of librarians, and we saw many grave ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... Gothic cathedral, with its clustered columns branching and forming pointed arches overhead, was probably suggested by a grove of trees with overarching branches and boughs. The idea of the column was derived from the papyrus plant, a species of reed growing in the river Nile. The bud or flower suggested the capital of the column; the stalk, the shaft; and the bulbous root, the pedestal. The blue vault of the sky undoubtedly suggested the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... exceptions, the words of MS. books, to the 15th century, run on continuously without spacing; and as to punctuation, little or nothing was known. In the Greek works on papyrus before Christ, there are to be found certain marks indicating pauses, such as the wedge-shaped sign (>). In Biblical MSS., however, the division of the text into lines enabled the reader the more easily to understand the meaning, and was an assistance to him in public reading. ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson

... with the finding of a papyrus containing the particulars of some of the treasures ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... was clay. Papyrus, it is true, was occasionally used, but it was expensive, while clay literally lay under the feet of everyone. While the clay was still soft, the cuneiform or "wedge-shaped" characters were engraved upon it by means of a stylus. They had originally ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... of Donation from Johannes, the Primicerius, or Captain of a company of soldiers, to the Church of Ravenna; written on papyrus, probably about A.D. 580-600, at Ravenna. Five feet four inches long by eleven and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly—Musca maledicta. In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work. Writers contemporary with the copyists naturally avail themselves of the obvious advantages of these marks in their own work, and with such assistance as the flies of their own household ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... wonders, O Genius,—Seeker of the Stars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from words themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up temples that shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrus becomes a Shinar, stately with towers, round which the Deluge of Ages, shall ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... who mimic my Athenian ancestors do everything so heavily. Even in the chase they make their slaves carry Plato with them; and whenever the boar is lost, out they take their books and their papyrus, in order not to lose their time too. When the dancing-girls swim before them in all the blandishment of Persian manners, some drone of a freedman, with a face of stone, reads them a section of Cicero "De Officiis". Unskilful pharmacists! pleasure ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... they were read; being small and confined, suitable to the comparatively small number of volumes which an ancient library generally contained, and also to the limited space within which a considerable number of rolls of papyrus might be placed. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... operations: he built good houses, whose interior he ornamented with no little taste, carved his weapons in graceful and intricate forms, manufactured excellent pottery, beat out from the inner bark of a tree a serviceable papyrus-cloth, upon which he printed, from blocks either carved or ingeniously pieced together, elegant and elaborate patterns in fast colours; and, with tools no better than a stone hatchet, a pointed shell, and a firestick, he constructed large canoes ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... not very good at arithmetic, and even grown men used counting boards or their fingers to help them in reckoning. In learning to write they smeared a thin layer of wax over a board and marked on that. There was a kind of paper called papyrus, made from a reed which grew mostly in Egypt, but this was expensive. Rolls were made of sheets of it pasted together, and these were their books. One of the books the boys studied much was the poems of Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—which tell about the siege of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis). (b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or destruction. (c) Conventionalized lily—the prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (d) A water-plant ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... trees from which were suspended like long stockings the nests of titmice, beautiful little yellow birds with black wings, and also wasps' nests resembling big roses, but colored like gray blotting-paper. In one place the river formed an expansion a few score paces wide, overgrown in part by papyrus. On this expansion aquatic birds always swarmed. There were storks just like our European storks, and storks with thick bills ending with a hook, and birds black as velvet, with legs red as blood, and flamingoes and ibises, and white spoon-bills with bills like spoons, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... ground; whilst its coat, also well adapted to the moist element it lived in, was long, and of such excellent quality that the natives prize it for wearing almost more than any other of the antelope tribe. The only food it would eat were the tops of the tall papyrus rushes; but though it ate and drank freely, and lay down very quietly, it always charged with ferocity any person ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... isn't," he said, and he took two square sheets that looked like papyrus, and put them each in a bowl. "There is the question of what you did, or did not do, that you should ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown

... which approaches so near to Senga or Tsenga opposite, as to narrow the Lake to some sixteen or eighteen miles. It is a low sandy point, the edge fringed on the north-west and part of the south with a belt of papyrus and reeds; the central parts wooded. Part of the south side has high sandy dunes, blown up by the south wind, which strikes it at right angles there. One was blowing as we marched along the southern side eastwards, and was very tiresome. We reached ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... "Verily a good son is of the gifts of God." [Footnote: The text was published by Prisse d'Avennes, entitled Facsimile d'un papyrus egyptien en caracteres hieratiques, Paris, 1847. For a translation of the whole work, see Virey, etudes sur ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... female figure studying a papyrus roll represents Science, and the adjacent female figure, resting one arm on the figure representing Science, and the other, on a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... Lower Egypt and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the south she sometimes is given the form of a vulture; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus stem, which latter spells her name; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; this may be accounted for partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... before nightfall, following the spoor of those Amahagger, we had plunged into a morass so vast that in all my experience I have never seen or heard of its like. It was a veritable ocean of papyrus and other reeds, some of them a dozen or more feet high, so that it was impossible to see ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician character. But when they wished to preserve their written documents, they employed clay tablets, and a stylus whose bevelled point made an impression like a narrow elongated wedge, or arrow-head. By a combination of these ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... parallel case of the British Museum. Here is a place that is a veritable treasure house. A repository of some of the most priceless historical relics to be found upon the earth. It contains, for instance, the famous Papyrus Manuscript of Thotmes II of the first Egyptian dynasty—a thing known to scholars all over the world as the oldest extant specimen of what can be called writing; indeed one can here see the actual evolution (I am ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... from his hiding-place three or four rolls of linen, laid one over the other, like folds of papyrus. These rolls consisted of slips of cloth about four inches wide and eighteen long; they were all carefully numbered and closely covered with writing, so legible that Dantes could easily read it, as well as make out the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... practice complete. But, under the confused accents of superstition, the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred text which is called the Book of the Dead. Here is the translation of some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God who speaks: "I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... lamps hung at intervals round the walls; the panels contain carvings in bas-relief of Egyptian emblems and devices; columns surround the central space, their capitals carved with the lotos-flower, their bases planted amidst papyrus leaves. A border of hieroglyphic inscription encircles the walls, just beneath the ceiling. In each corner of the room rests a red granite sarcophagus, and between each pair of pillars stands a mummy in its wooden case. At that end farthest from the low-browed doorway—which ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... to linger over, that there have been no collectors of sea-tales; that no man has ever, as in the present instance, dwelt upon the topic with the purpose of gathering some of the best work into a single volume. And yet men have written of the sea since 2500 B.C. when an unknown author set down on papyrus his account of a struggle with a sea-serpent. This account, now in the British Museum, is the first sea-story on record. Our modern sea-stories begin properly with the chronicles of the early navigators—in ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... we have the Berlin papyrus, which, although of a later period, refers with careful specification to a medical literature of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... presenting a vase, which appeared to be made of iron, amidst the acclamations of an assembled multitude engaged in triumphal procession before the altars dignified by the name of Apollo at Delphi; and I saw in the same place men who carried rolls of papyrus in their hands and wrote upon them with reeds containing ink made from the soot of wood mixed with a solution of glue. "See," the Genius said, "an immense change produced in the condition of society by the two arts of which you here see the origin; the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... what night have the Orient dieties strayed? Swart gods of the Nile, in dusk splendors arrayed, Brooding Isis and somber Osiris, You were gone ere the fragile papyrus, (That bragged ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... ancient allegories as the bull of God which taketh away the sin of the world; which, shorn of its allegorical sense, signifies the sun in Taurus, or sun of spring, which taketh away the evil of Winter. Such is the purport of hieroglyphical inscriptions upon papyrus rolls found in Egypt, and engraved upon obelisks erected in the Nile valley, one of which has been recently brought to the City of New York and set up in Central Park. In the East Indies this symbol was represented ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... was too much alive; speech hardly amounted to a breath; the newspapers, agreeing with the salons, seemed a papyrus. There were some young people, but they were rather dead. The liveries in the antechamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete personages were served by ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... its products show careful and finished labor. Hand looms in all Oriental countries are similar, and are to-day almost as imperfectly developed as when used by the ancient Egyptians. To weave their mats, the ancient Egyptians took the coarse fibre of the papyrus and, with the help of pegs, stretched it between two poles which were fastened in the ground. Two bars were placed in between these poles, the threads of the warp serving to keep them apart. The woof thread was passed through and pressed down tightly a number of times with ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... of the early mixture of non-canonical books with canonical, by reason of their having been kept as separate papyrus rolls in the same chest (Swete's Introd. p. 225), seems not an unlikely one in the case of independent works such as Judith or Wisdom. But it appears to lose its force in the case of additions such as these, or those to the book of Esther. For the Song of the Three, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... which is constantly changed. To-day, it will be a water-color sketch by John Lewis; to-morrow, an etching by Albert Duerer or Seymour Haden; the next day, an oil painting by Elihu Vedder, or perhaps an ancient Egyptian funerary papyrus, with curious pen-and-ink vignettes of gods and genii surmounting the closely ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... escape is eternal, the variety differs with the individual and still more with the period. While youthful love, or romantic adventure as in "Treasure Island," has been an acceptable mode for literature at least as far back as the papyrus tales of the Egyptians, more precise means of delivery from the intolerable weight of real life appear and disappear in popular books. In the early eighteen hundreds, men and women longed to be blighted in love, to be in lonely revolt against the prosaic ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... at Pergamum that, to replace the papyrus on which down to that time they used to write, they invented the art of preparing skins. This new paper of Pergamum was the parchment on which the manuscripts of antiquity have ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... It reappears later at Medinet Habu, in the temple of Thothmes III., and again at Karnak, in what is known as the processional hall. The sides of these square pillars are often covered with painted scenes, while the front faces were more decoratively treated, being sculptured with lotus or papyrus stems in high relief, as on the pillar- stelae of Karnak, or adorned with a head of Hathor crowned with the sistrum, as in the small speos of Abu Simbel (fig. 57), or sculptured with a full-length standing figure of Osiris, as in the second ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... waist, his face thin, coffee-colored, hawk-nosed, and lightning-eyed, he looked a king of the desert. Galloping down on the Christian, he twirled the formidable lance dextrously, until it seemed not more than a stalk of dried papyrus. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... axes, however, we managed to make our onward way until we gained the island, but here to our disappointment we found that we were thirty yards or more from the clear water, which was full of great masses of papyrus with stalks ten feet in height, and an inch and a half in diameter. These also were bound together by the convolvulus in a way which made them perfectly impenetrable. While we stood on the shore of the island ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston

... young Pharaoh Horemheb; the portrait statue of the grand dignitary Uahabra, a good specimen of Saitic art; a column of the temple, covered with high reliefs, which represented a procession of bald-headed priests holding canopi in their hands; a capital, carved with papyrus leaves and lotus flowers; and a fragment of an Egyptian basrelief in red granite, with traces ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... Mexicans (Mayas, Aztecs, or Tescucans, etc.) used for writing and drawing upon was of vegetable origin, like the Egyptian papyrus. It was made by macerating the leaves of the maguey, a plant of the greatest importance (v. p. 94). When the surface of the paper was glazed, the letters were painted on in brilliant colors, proceeding from left to right, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... Ptolemaic grave-stone has been discovered bearing the signs of the wheel and trident.[1104] The infant deity Horus is represented in Indian attitudes and as sitting on a lotus. Some fragments of the Kanarese language have been found on a papyrus, but it appears not to be earlier than the second century A.D.[1105] In 21 A.D. Augustus while at Athens received an embassy from India ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... It is sparingly furnished with a table, two stools, and a couch, all in the simpler style of the early dynasties.... The table, which is set at an angle, is piled with papyri, and one papyrus is half-unrolled and held open by paper-weights where somebody has been reading it.... There is a small window in one wall, opening on the pomegranate garden. At the back, between two heavy pillars, is a doorway.... Two women are heard to pass, laughing and talking, through the corridor outside, ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... "Providence," by freaks of chance, by virtue of its own inherent strength—whatever has been buried by misers, fondled, treasured by loving hands of collectors and connoisseurs during all these centuries—every speck of ancient dust, every scrap of parchment or papyrus, a corroded piece of metal, a broken piece of stone or glass, so eagerly sought by the archaeologists and historians of the last few generations—all these fragmentary messages from out of the past emphasize the greatness of their time. They show its modernity, its ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... west, whence winter peers, All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved, Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years, And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved, It was a dream—we have no goodly ears— ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... try to hope, with all souls) on board, and everything that transpired till Mr. Gowles found himself alone, the sole survivor, and bestriding the mast in the midst of a tempestuous sea. What follows is from the record kept on pieces of skin, shards of pottery, plates of metal, papyrus leaves, and other strange substitutes for paper, used by Mr. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... have so much to do with the invention of printing that I feel obliged to tarry a little longer at this preliminary stage. The most important of all the ancient materials for writing upon were papyrus, parchment, and vellum; and on these substances nearly all our most valuable manuscripts were written. Papyrus, or paper-rush, is a large fibrous plant which abounds in the marshes of Egypt, especially near the borders of the Nile. It was manufactured into a thick ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... ancient films have crumbled like Papyrus rolls of Egypt's day, Let the dust speak: "Her pride was high, All but ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... out on the terrace, which looked towards the east, and entered an open colonnade. But before he went farther, he took the precaution of dropping small pieces of papyrus to show him the way back. He went through narrow courtyards, but took care not to climb steps; his experience of yesterday had warned him. At last he found himself in a forest of pillars whose tops were crowned with lotus-buds, and, as ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... institutions, pass away like dreams. But thoughts and words remain, whether they be of white men, or black, or yellow, whether they be of Jews or of Hellenes, whether they be inscribed on slabs of stone, or on boards of clay, or on strips of papyrus. Words and thoughts live to the present day; they still move us and uplift us, even though we have already forgotten the names of those who spoke them. And we know that only the winged words live on, the words that are intelligible to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... of the other world, however, never found general favor and are confined to a few royal tombs. The priests and other prominent people have rolls of papyrus buried with them, bearing copies of books of the dead. These books of the dead are made up of a series of chapters, each complete in itself and each dealing with some phase of the future life. There is no set order of chapters. There is no fixed number of chapters. Each scribe seems ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... production of good or evil, has been characteristic of all historic epochs and nations. The exorcist of ancient Egypt relied on amulets and mysterious phrases for the cure of disease; and a metrical petition traced on a papyrus-leaf, or a formula of prayer opportunely repeated, "put to flight the serpents, who were ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... question arises as to what portion of the chapters therein may be considered authentic. Scholars have rejected the entire gospel of John as less reliable than the synoptic gospels; and the sixteenth chapter of Mark as an addition after the original papyrus had broken off. Modernists, being confronted, in spite of these deletions, with inconsistencies in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, have assumed the further privilege of rejecting any verses which appear at variance with their beliefs. Liberals of this class ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... enchantment, quivering, vital patterns of burning beauty. Down the narrow, branching paths that led to inner mysteries the light ran in and out, peeping between the divided leaves of plants, gliding over the slippery edges of the palm branches, trembling airily where the papyrus bent its antique head, dancing among the big blades of sturdy grass that sprouted in tufts here and there, resting languidly upon the glistening magnolias that were besieged by somnolent bees. All the greens ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... that Jesus gave no directions or methods of attainment, yet the records of his sayings give the clue to the character of his instruction to those of his students who were capable of understanding, particularly as shown in a recently discovered papyrus, authentically identified as belonging to the early Christians. This-papyrus was discovered by Egyptian explorers in 1904. Although the papyrus was more or less mutilated, the meaning is sufficiently clear to justify the translators in inserting certain words. However, we will ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... among the institutions of civilization were the channels of communication and transportation that have played so decisive a role in the life of every civilization. Top ranking among the means of communication were common language, spoken and written on metal, papyrus, paper; a unified system of accounting and cost keeping; permanent records. Among the means of transport were waterways, including canals, viaducts, roads, bridges skillfully built and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... W. W. Phelps said in Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1862 that while Joseph was translating the Book of Abraham in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835, from the papyrus found with the Egyptian mummies, the Prophet became impressed with the idea that polygamy would yet become an institution of the Mormon Church. Brigham Young was present, and was much annoyed at the statement made by Phelps; but it is highly probable ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... they departed by the northern road. In the British Museum is a letter written on papyrus over three thousand years ago, in which an Egyptian writer describes his journey from Ramses in pursuit of two runaway servants. The days of the month are given; and his stopping-places were the same as those of the Israelites. (Exodus xii. 37): 'The ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... Papyrus is a manner rush, that is dried to kindle fire and lanterns, and hight the feeding of fire. And this herb is put to burn in prickets and in tapers. The rind is stripped off unto the pith, and is so dried, and a little is left of the rind on the ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... wall came nigh, it changed into a line of men—common fellows enough, with helmets, leather tunics, and breastplates. Every man of them flung his javelin: the one that came my way drove through my shield as through a papyrus—lo there! (he points to the bandage on his left arm) and would have gone through my neck had I not stooped. They were charging at the double then, and were upon us with short swords almost as soon as their javelins. When a man is close to you with such a sword, you ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... greatest gods. Literature is at the same high level of development with the other arts, and writing is used for every branch of the public service. This, the most ancient of the literatures of the world, is spread over the immense surfaces of ancient temples and tombs, and stored up in masses of papyrus rolls, much of which is still to be explored. Our knowledge of ancient Egypt and its religion is still in its infancy. The story of the decipherment of the various characters and of the recovery of the early language of Egypt ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... under whose direction a large staff of scribes was perpetually at work, may be gathered from the well-known story that his bibliographical rival at Alexandria, exasperated by his activity and success, conceived the ingenious device of crippling his endeavours by forbidding the exportation of papyrus. Eumenes, however, says the chronicler, was equal to the occasion, and defeated the scheme by inventing parchment[19]. It is probable that Eumenes not only began but completed the library, for in less than a quarter of a century after his death (B.C. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... mass of the people clung to the idea of a bodily resurrection (Ibid, p. 54). "It is to the later times of Egyptian history, perhaps to the five centuries immediately before the Christian era, that the religious opinions contained in the funeral papyri chiefly belong. The roll of papyrus buried with the mummy often describes the funeral, and then goes on to the return of the soul to the body, the resurrection, the various trials and difficulties which the deceased will meet and overcome in the next world, and the garden of paradise in which he awaits ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... was a temporary village of tabernacles or huts made of plaited palm-leaves, and papyrus canes or reeds, such as one sees on the line of the Jordan or about the lake Hhooleh, with the same class of proprietors in both cases, the Ghawarineh Arabs. Strange that this race of human beings should prefer to inhabit ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... Copt gave me that," he said, watching its effect with satisfaction. "He told me he had gotten it from a temple papyrus, and that it was undoubtedly one of the lost perfumes of Punt, used by the higher priesthood in their mysteries. Once a year he sends me such a tiny vial as you see. I could hardly have survived my searchings in this house, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... Arrius, these Apollonians have a better trick than that. Instead of speech with a Pythia or a Sibyl, they will sell you a plain papyrus leaf, hardly dry from the stalk, and bid you dip it in the water of a certain fountain, when it will show you a verse in which you ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... enveloped in three pieces of papyrus bark, on a small sandy point in Cygnet Bay. All the bones were closely packed together, and the head surmounted the whole. It did not appear to have been long interred. They had evidently been packed with care. All ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... least in the West, by a famine of more than a thousand years. And it is hard, even after all allowances, to conceive that of all the many manuscripts of Homer which Italy must have possessed we do not know that a single parchment or papyrus was ever read by a single individual, even in a convent, or even by a giant such as Dante, or as Thomas Acquinas, the first of them unquestionably master of all the knowledge that was within the compass of his age. There were, however, libraries ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone

... of Med and Melita, compelled by law to carry on their exchange in the morning only, when the light is least lovely. Upon canopied wagons drawn by strange animals, with shining horns, were displayed for sale all the pleasantest excuses for commerce—ostrich feathers, gums, gems, quicksilver, papyrus, bales of fair cloth, pottery, wine and oranges. The sellers of salt and fish and wool and skins were forced down under the wharfs of the lagoon, and there endeavoured to attract attention by displaying fanciful and lovely banners and by ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... the Nile, the sacred river, I can see the captive hordes Strain beneath the lash and quiver At the long papyrus cords, While in granite rapt and solemn, Rising over roof and column, Amen-hotep dreams, or Ramses, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... caused by the increased outflow from the lakes in Central Africa, inasmuch as this outflow is quite lost in the marshy land south of Fashoda. Moreover, the river is absolutely blocked by the accumulation of the Papyrus weed, known as Sudd, the [Hebrew: eis] of Scripture, Exod. ii. 3-5. The inundations are brought about purely by the excessive rains in the highlands of Abyssinia, which cause the flooding of the Blue Nile and the ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... Venice; again it was transformed into a dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or fac-simile,—even a mummied finger and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... the date of the two codices, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus, as not earlier than the fifth or sixth century, the principal reason for assigning to them so late a date being the generally accepted theory that uncials were not in use until vellum had entirely superseded papyrus as the medium for precious manuscripts. But the latest authority in this department, Mr. F. G. Kenyon, has thrown light on the whole question of early Christian Greek MSS., by the discovery of a large uncial round hand on a papyrus dated Anno ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from Easter Island, the eyes of which were two missionary shirt buttons of mother-of-pearl, of the Puritan type; your practical cannibal, having eaten his missionary, spits out the shirt buttons ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... a stalwart negro, Nicasio and I improvise a lodging on the banks of the river which flows near Don Benigno's country house. Our rustic bower consists of a framework of roughly cut branches, and has an outer covering formed of the dried papyrus-like bark of palms. The interior is not spacious, but it meets all our requirements. In it we can swing our hammocks at night, and assume a sitting posture without inconvenience during the day. Our implements for sketching, together with a couple of double-barrelled guns ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... to it. Incited by this example, Eumenes, King of Pergamus, established out of rivalry a similar library in his metropolis. With the intention of preventing him from excelling that of Egypt, Ptolemy Epiphanes prohibited the exportation of papyrus, whereupon Eumenes invented the art of making parchment. The second great Alexandrian library was that established by Ptolemy Physcon at the Serapion, in the adjoining quarter of the town. The library in the Bruchion, which was estimated to contain 400,000 volumes, was accidentally, or, as it has ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... as a lovely temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical flowers—the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... hopeless profundity of treatises on the tides, dynamics, electricity, and microscopic anatomicals, are, I am free to avow, worse to me than "heathen Greek," nay (for I can in some sort tackle that), more difficult than the clay tablets of Assyria or a papyrus of Rameses II. So I must confess to being an idle ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... all their parts), its use extends to the pot and wood for cooking. It seems to me that its uses could go no farther; and in these it corresponds, too, with what Pliny [46] writes of the reed and the papyrus—particularly as within the hollow of the cane, there are membranes somewhat similar to beaten and glazed paper, on which I have at times written. In some of the canes there is also found a juice or liquor which is drunk as a luxury. There ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards the middle of the seventh century (B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time of Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... ancient ornaments and implements in the Egyptian Gallery of the Louvre, I saw an object of startling interest. A fragment of the Iliad, written nearly three thousand years ago! One may even dare to conjecture that the torn and half-mouldered slip of papyrus, upon which he gazes, may have been taken down from the lips of the immortal Chiun. The eyes look on those faded characters, and across the great gulf of Time, the soul leaps into the Past, brought into shadowy nearness by a mirage of the mind. There, as in the desert, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... metaphorical is it in its present reception! It is originally just a volumen, that is, a 'roll' of parchment, papyrus, or whatever else the 'book' (i. e., the bark—the 'liber') might be composed of. Nor can we regard as aught other such terms as 'leaf' or 'folio,' which is also 'leaf.' 'Stave,' too, is suggestive of the staff on which the runes were wont to be cut. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... thirde daye shaued their bodies, that there might be none occasion of filthinesse when they shold ministre or sacrifie. Thei did were garmentes of linnen, euer cleane wasshed, and white: and shoes of a certeine kinde of russhes, named Papyrus, whiche aftre became stuffe, to geue name to our paper. They neither sette beane their selues, ne eate them where soeuer they grewe: ne the priest may not loke vpon a beane, for that it is iudged an vncleane puls. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... been damaged. This silk, as he explained it to me, was a fabric composed of the entrails of a species of earth-worm. The worm was carefully fed on mulberries—kind of fruit resembling a water-melon—and, when sufficiently fat, was crushed in a mill. The paste thus arising was called papyrus in its primary state, and went through a variety of processes until it finally became "silk." Singular to relate, it was once much admired as an article of female dress! Balloons were also very generally ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... collection of Etruscan vases. A large hall contains these vases, which were found at Pompeii[96]; they are much admired for their beauty and simplicity; each vase has a mythological or historical painting on it. In this Museum I was shewn the rolls of papyrus found in Pompeii and Herculaneum and the method of unrolling them. The work to unroll which they are now employed at this Museum is a Greek treatise on philosophy by Epicurus. It is a most delicate ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... rapping on the tree trunks; a native illustrated this by whacking a table with a book. The perched-up houses of the Dyaks are haunted by noisy routing agencies. We find them in monasteries, palaces, and crofters' cottages all through the Middle Ages. On an ancient Egyptian papyrus we find the husband of the Lady Onkhari protesting against her habit of haunting his house, and exclaiming: "What wrong have I done," exactly in the spirit of the "Hymn of Donald Ban," who was "sair hadden down by a bodach" (noisy bogle) ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... printing was invented in Europe scarce four hundred years ago, and paper has not been manufactured for more than six hundred years at the outside. True, other materials have been used to write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of animals—(parchment)—cunningly worked fibres of plants—(papyrus, byblos)—even wooden tablets covered with a thin layer of wax, on which characters were engraved with a pointed instrument or "style,"—and these contrivances have preserved for us records which reach back many hundreds of years beyond ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... Xenophon. The literary guild, including philosophers by the score, were there in full feather, and Xenophon put himself to the trouble of giving a complete list of these distinguished persons; and to the report, as it was penned for the "Athens Weekly Papyrus," he appended a fine puff of Socrates, which has led posterity to surmise that Socrates conferred a great compliment on Xanthippe in marrying her. Yet, what else could we expect of this man Xenophon? The only ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... in an impulse of reparation I stooped hastily and attempted to smooth out the mortal dust which bore the imprint of my heel. But the fine powder flaked my glove, and, looking about for something to compose the ashes with, I picked up a papyrus scroll. Perhaps he himself had written on it; nobody can ever know, and I used it as a sort of hoe to scrape him together and smooth him ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... exordium preceded some very practical demonstrations. 'The apron is the banner of the future!' exclaimed the lecturer, and he took his coat off and put his apron on. He spoke a little about old bindings for the papyrus roll, about the ivory or cedar cylinders round which old manuscripts were wound, about the stained covers and the elaborate strings, till binding in the modern sense began with literature in a folded form, with literature in pages. A binding, he pointed ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... which its floor was strewn, suggestive of great opulence. But the littered table was there, with its nameless instruments and its extraordinary silver lamp; the mummies were there; the antique volumes, rolls of papyrus, preserved snakes and cats and ibises, statuettes of Isis, Osiris and other Nile deities were there; the many photographs of women, too (Cairn had dubbed it at Oxford "the zenana"); above all, ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... type to stamp their coins and lead pipes with and if they had had paper to print upon the world might have escaped the Dark Ages. But the clay tablets of the Babylonians were cumbersome; the wax tablets of the Greeks were perishable; the papyrus of the Egyptians was fragile; parchment was expensive and penning was slow, so it was not until literature was put on a paper basis that democratic education became possible. At the present time sheepskin is only used for diplomas, treaties and other antiquated documents. And even if your diploma ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... Lachsyrma was deciphering some yellow leaves of papyrus. The dusk was falling, and he laid down the pen with which he was delicately transcribing uncials on sheets of foolscap, in order to light a lamp on the table. It was 6.30 by an irritating little American clock recently presented ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... through Takla-Makan from Khotan to Shah Yar, visited the ruins between the Khotan Daria and the Kiria Daria, where he found the remains of the city of Takla-Makan now buried in the sands. He discovered figures of Buddha, a piece of papyrus with unknown characters, vestiges of habitations. This Asiatic Pompei, says the traveller, at least ten centuries old, is anterior to the Mahomedan invasion led by Kuteibe Ibn-Muslim, which happened at the beginning of the 8th century. Its inhabitants were Buddhist, and of Aryan race, probably ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... worthy Otoes showed Ramses the fields and vineyards of the pharaoh; he showed what canal they were clearing, what sluice they were repairing; he showed furnaces for smelting copper; he showed where the royal granaries' stood, where the lotus and papyrus swamps were, what fields were covered with sand, and so on till he ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... in a laughing voice, "whilst I was waiting for you to come, do you know what I saw in this manuscript, written by the gravest of Stoics? Precepts of virtue and noble maxims: No! On the staid papyrus, I saw dance thousands and thousands of little Thaises. Each was no bigger than my finger, and yet their grace was infinite, and all were the only Thais. There were some who flaunted in mantles of purple and gold; others, like a white cloud, floated in the air ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... however, they were, notwithstanding the distractions of Neaera; went, neatly written out in red-lined columns, to the brothers Sosii in the street called Argiletum, to be multiplied by the librarian's scribes on well-bleached Egyptian papyrus, bound in pumiced parchment, stored in metal boxes on the bookseller's shelves within, while the names of the author and his work were inscribed upon a pillar outside the shop, as a guide to intending purchasers. Copies were sold, probably, for a few ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... hand, cramped hand, crabbed hand, illegible hand; scribble &c. v.; pattes de mouche[Fr]; ill-formed letters; pothooks and hangers. stationery; pen, quill, goose quill; pencil, style; paper, foolscap, parchment, vellum, papyrus, tablet, slate, marble, pillar, table; blackboard; ink bottle, ink horn, ink pot, ink stand, ink well; typewriter. transcription &c. (copy) 21; inscription &c. (record) 551; superscription &c. (indication) 550; graphology. composition, authorship; cacoethes scribendi[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... river cashew trees overshadowed the thatch of fishing huts. Beyond fields of lilies one made out, flitting away, sooty wanderers clad in ragged kilts and carrying thin-bladed spears. Then marshes spread afar: the transparent stalks of papyrus trembled above the bluish pallor of lotuses. As the declining sun poured its gold across the world, the air over the marshes was jeweled from a great rush of geese, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... all about joint stock companies, trust fund companies, municipal bonds and debentures," said the magnate, unrolling a bundle of unintelligible papyrus showing assets which did not exist, and spreading them out on the bed in front of his victim. The whole system had been premeditated and had been systematically worked out. "Now," said the shark, pointing at long and encouraging figures, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... insurmountable obstacle in the traveller's way. After the rainy season the White Nile overflows its banks, forming an inextricable labyrinth of side branches, lakes, and marshes. The country lies under water for miles around. The waterway between impenetrable beds of reeds and papyrus is often as narrow as a lane. The roots of large plants are loosened from the mud at the bottom, and are compacted with stems and mud into large sheets which are driven northwards by the rushing water. They are caught fast in small ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... first Syriac scholars, and with the teaching given in an unanswered article in the Church Quarterly Review for April, 1895. Nor except in passing do I remark upon a fanciful censure of my account of the use of papyrus in MSS. before the tenth century—as to which the reviewer is evidently not versed in information recently collected, and described for example in Sir E. Maunde Thompson's Greek and Latin Palaeography, or in Mr. F. G. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... Allen, an eminent textual scholar, treats the Pisistratean editor with no higher respect. In an Egyptian papyrus containing a fragment of Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologer, Mr. Allen finds him talking confidently of the Pisistratidae. They "stitched together the rest of the epic," but excised some magical formulae which Julius Africanus preserves. Mr. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Papyrus" :   paper plant, paper, genus Cyperus, paper rush, document, sedge, Egyptian paper rush, written document, Cyperus



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