On May 17, I visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in the morning for only two hours, and the tour guide could only give a rough explanation. In the papyrus gallery, he introduced the original papyrus paintings that weighed the good and evil of the dead with scales. We walked out of the museum at about 1 1: 20 and got on the tourist bus. After driving for five or six minutes, I went to a restaurant on the Nile for lunch. After lunch, the guide took us to visit a papyrus painting shop, which only takes about five minutes by car.
Production process of papyrus paper
The commentator speaks Chinese and always says disgusting things are funny things. For me, the biggest gain is to see the process of making papyrus by sedge and papyrus.
Cyperaceae is very similar to Gramineae, except that the stem of Cyperaceae is triangular and solid; The stems of Gramineae are round and hollow. Juncus is a common Cyperaceae plant. But the stems of Egyptian papyrus are too thick. We have never seen such thick papyrus.
The method of making papyrus paper is to peel off the skin of papyrus, take its pith, cut it into thin slices, beat it thin with a mallet, then soak it in water for a week, take it out and weave it into a mat, and then press it for another week. I asked the commentator, should I add glue to the soaked water? He took me to the counter and asked me to buy one. I said I had bought six, and I just wanted to learn more. He said impatiently that sedge sticks naturally without glue.
Egyptian papyrus, the pith of which is sliced and woven into mats, can be used to make papyrus. Author photo
No one bought our car in the souvenir shop, and Papyrus painting, the tour guide and interpreter, was disappointed. I told the tour guide and commentator that the stall owner got on the boat yesterday to sell paper and grass paintings. He said that Papyrus painting is made of banana leaves, which will go bad in a few weeks. The goods sold in the store are really exquisite, and it is too exaggerated to say that the small seller is made of banana leaves.
Walking out of this Papyrus painting store, a shipmate asked me, "There was paper in Egypt a long time ago. How can you say it was invented by China? " I told him that paper has a definition of paper. Paper is made of boiled plant fibers (pulp). Egyptian papyrus just squashes the pith of papyrus and weaves it into mats, not paper.
The Origin and Improvement of Paper
Before the invention of paper, ancient Babylonians wrote with clay tablets, ancient Egyptians with papyrus, ancient Indians with leaves (leaves of palm plants), ancient Europeans with sheepskin, and ancient China with bamboo slips or wooden slips. These writing materials are either inconvenient to use or expensive. Take the sheepskin used by westerners as an example. It takes 300 sheep to copy a Bible. How can ordinary people afford it?
The Book of the Dead in ancient Egypt tells the whereabouts of the deceased with words and images, among which the papyrus collected by the British Museum in BC 1275 is the most famous. The picture shows a copy of his illustration "Osiris's Trial of the Dead". Author photo
The invention of paper originated very early, but early paper was not suitable for writing. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Lun used bark, hemp head, rags and broken fishing nets as raw materials, cut them into pieces, cooked them, mashed them, then "copied" them on mats and dried them to make paper. The paper made in this way is thin and flat, which is very suitable for writing. In the first year of Yuan Xing in the Eastern Han Dynasty (105), Cai Lun reported this achievement to Han and Emperor, and all parts of the country began to use this method to make paper.
After Cai Lun's success in improving papermaking technology, the papermaking industry has developed rapidly, and the raw materials used are more and more extensive. From bark and bamboo to straw and rice straw, almost everything with fiber can be used for papermaking. By the Jin Dynasty, paper had replaced bamboo slips and wooden slips and became the most commonly used writing material.
In the eighth century, papermaking invented by China began to spread to the west. In the tenth year of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (75 1), China and Dashi (* * * Empire) fought a war in Zhuluo (present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan). China was defeated and captured many officers and men in the past. Many of these captured officers and men were papermaking workers, so papermaking spread to Dashi.
In 1 150, * * people set up a paper mill in Spain (Spain was occupied by * * * people from the beginning of the eighth century), and papermaking began to be introduced to Europe. At this time, it has been 1000 years since Cai Lun successfully improved papermaking!