12/28/2023 0 Comments Papyrus paperThe Hula Valley is currently its northern-most distribution area in the world. Paper Reed can be found in Israel almost solely in the Hula Nature Reserve, a few plants are also in other places in the Hula Valley and in a single place in the Sharon region. All the rays emerge from a single point, from an enveloping axil of about half a dozen leaves, which are not as long as the inflorescence rays. The umbel rays are green and photosynthetic. It spreads out as an umbel with dozens of rays that reach a length of 30 cm. The single inflorescence is carried at the head of the stem, branched, beautiful and impressive. Paper Reed blooms in the summer, from June until October. They are broad and short, imbricate, brown and not green, concentrated at the base of the stem. This tissue is enveloped by a sealed green coat. The tissue inside the stem is white, spongy, and contains air spaces that assist the respiration of the plant parts that are immersed in the oxygen-poor environment of the water and the mud. The stem reaches a thickness of up to 5 cm and a height of 4 m. The stem is thick, strong, ribbed, with a triangular cross-section and rounded apices. The stems emerge from the rhizome, and do not branch. They die each year and new ones will sprout in their stead the following year. It has a crawling, perennial rhizome below the soil surface, in the mud. It is composed of three stories, adapted to its habitat, the marsh: its roots are in the soil, its stem is in the water and its head is in the air, above the water surface. See MCAD Library's catalog record for this material.Cyperus papyrus (Nile Papyrus, Paper Reed) is a tall perennial herbaceous plant that grows in tropical marshes. These modern papyrus specimens were purchased in Cairo by an MCAD student from Egypt in 1996. After the invention of parchment in what is now Turkey around 200 BCE, use of papyrus as a writing material began to decline. Still, despite its disadvantages, papyrus was widely exported (the plant is not abundant beyond the Nile Valley), until it began to be replaced by Parchment, made of prepared animal skins. If unrolled and flattened for reading too frequently, papyrus tended to fray at the edges, and the leaves could easily come apart. Once rolled into a scroll, a lengthy papyrus manuscript had a tendency to maintain a tight curl, so it was cumbersome to read, and often required weights to hold it open. To produce a scroll, many leaves of uniform size would be joined together at their edges. Papyrus manuscripts are often modest in size. Because the plant fibers are close to the surface, artists and scribes found it easiest to work in a very linear, formulaic style, following the natural lines of the material. The burnished surface did not hold ink and paint particularly well if a manuscript was subjected to frequent use. Though abundant and relatively cheap to produce, papyrus had some disadvantages for the artist or scribe. Papyrus was used in a variety of ways – as a construction material, or to produce useful items including mats, baskets, and even boats – but its greatest importance in the study of Egyptian art and archaeology was its use as a writing material for government records and religious texts (including the famous “Books of the Dead”). Once fully dried, the papyrus leaves were smoothed and polished, and their edges trimmed. When the “sandwich” had partially dried – enough to hold its shape – the linen top and bottom layers were removed for re-use. Then this “sandwich” was beaten with a wooden mallet to break down the plant fibers and release a sticky sap which then served as an adhesive to bind the fiber layers together. The strips were “sandwiched” between top and bottom layers of linen cloth. After removing the outer rind and soaking the pithy strips in water for several days until they began to decompose, papyrus makers laid the cut strips close together on a hard surface, with another layer laid on top at right angles. Papyrus is made from the pithy inner stems of the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus), which grows abundantly along the banks of the Nile River. Among the most important precursors of paper, Papyrus was used by the ancient Egyptians for the production of books and manuscripts as early as the fourth millennium BCE.
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