# Paper: A Short Account of Its Making

*Passage 2 of 8, in the reading room. Unchanged from the study, passage for passage.*

Fillers, such as fine white clay or chalk, are added to make the surface smoother and the sheet more opaque, so that writing on one side does not show through on the other. Coatings may be applied to the surface for printing fine pictures. Dyes and pigments give color. Each of these additions has a history of its own, and each changed what paper could be used for.

The word paper comes, by way of Latin and Greek, from papyrus, the reed from which the ancient Egyptians made their writing sheets. The borrowing is a little misleading, because papyrus is not paper in the strict sense. A papyrus sheet is made by laying strips of the plant's pith side by side and pressing them together, so the plant structure remains intact. True paper is made from fibers that have been fully separated and then re-formed. The distinction may seem technical, but it marks a real difference in method, and it explains why paper could be made from almost any fibrous plant, while papyrus could be made from only one.

Paper's usefulness lies in a combination of qualities that no earlier material offered all at once. It is light, flexible, and cheap. It can be made in large quantities from common materials. It accepts ink well, folds without breaking, and can be cut, bound, and stored with ease. Each of the materials it replaced had some of these virtues, but none had them all. That combination explains why paper, once known, spread so widely and why it remained the principal material for recorded writing for many centuries.

II. Before Paper

Long before paper existed, people wrote on whatever surfaces were at hand. Marks were cut into bone and stone, pressed into clay, painted on pottery, and scratched into bark. Each surface had advantages and drawbacks, and the choice of material shaped the kinds of records that could be kept.

In Mesopotamia, scribes pressed a cut reed into tablets of soft clay, leaving the wedge-shaped marks now called cuneiform. Clay was abundant along the rivers, and a tablet could be smoothed and reused while still damp. Once dried in the air, or fired in a kiln, a tablet became remarkably durable. Many thousands survive, including letters, contracts, lists of goods, and records of payments. Clay was heavy, however, and a tablet could hold only a modest amount of text. Shipping clay records over long distances was costly, and storing large numbers of them required a great deal of space.

In Egypt, papyrus served for several thousand years. The plant grew thickly along the Nile, and its stems contain a soft, fibrous pith. To make a sheet, workers cut the pith into thin strips and laid one layer side by side, with a second layer across it at a right angle. The layers were pressed, and the plant's own sap helped bind them. After drying, the surface was rubbed smooth with a hard, polished tool. Sheets could be joined end to end to form long rolls. Papyrus was light and took ink well, and it was exported throughout the Mediterranean. It was less suited to damp climates, where it tended to decay, and it could crack when folded repeatedly.

Parchment, made from animal skins, became important in the Mediterranean world and later throughout medieval Europe. The skin of a calf, sheep, or goat was soaked in a solution of lime, scraped clean of hair and flesh, stretched on a frame, and dried under tension. The result was a strong, smooth, durable sheet that could be written on both sides and folded into the pages of a bound volume. The finest grade, made from the skins of very young calves, was called vellum.

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