These books usually read right to left and are unrolled from right to left. In the 18 th dynasty (~1400 BCE) funerary texts began being copied onto papyri rolls and placed in wealthy burials these became known as Books of the Dead. From ~2700-2200 BCE the maximum height was between ~8 and 9 ½” while in the New Kingdom period ~1500-1100 BCE the average height was ~16″.Īll types of recorded information were written on papyrus rolls or sections of a roll including legal, medical, administrative, mathematical and personal documents.
The height of the rolls varied in different periods. The rolls were stored either upright in vertical containers or in chests. The roll format explains why a laminate structure of perpendicular fibers was necessary. If rolled in the opposite direction (vertical fibers inside) the fibers would have been crushed. The completed roll or book was then rolled with the horizontal fibers on the inside and the vertical ones on the outside. Recent analysis has identified starch paste in the joins of several ancient papyri. The overlap was pasted, pressed and possibly burnished.
To make the roll, individual sheets were overlapped slightly normally the sheet on the right overlapped the sheet on the left by 1-2 cm. Smaller papyrus documents were either from halved or quartered rolls cut to certain lengths. The papyrus roll format dates back to ~3,000 BCE and there is little evidence individual sheets were ever used alone. Once a papyrus sheet was formed it was joined together with other sheets to form long rolls.
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