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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



... instruments as our modern smiths, 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 ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... euery 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. They are wasshed euery daye in colde ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of 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 having brought up Horus in a floating ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... 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, without that saving perfume. Do you feel able ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... sleeves. On advancing, Julien recognized, through the vegetable odors of that spring night, the strong scent of the Virginian tobacco which Madame Steno had used since she had fallen in love with Maitland, instead of the Russian "papyrus" to which Gorka had accustomed her. It is by such insignificant traits that amorous women recognize a love profoundly, insatiably sensual, the only one of which the Venetian was capable. Their passionate desire to give themselves up still more leads them to espouse, so to speak, the slightest ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the sun, a curved line for the moon, a pointed oval for the mouth. The second sort of characters, the hieratic, and the third, the demotic, are curtailed pictures, which can thus be written more rapidly. They are seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs proper may be written either way, or in a perpendicular line. In the demotic, or people's writing, the characters are somewhat more curtailed, or abridged, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... peas, lentils, &c. There were also in the same house, vases, articles of glass, bronze, and terra-cotta, several medallions in silver, on one of which was represented in relief, Apollo and Diana. A great treasure of ancient books or manuscripts, consisting of papyrus rolls, has also been discovered, which has excited the greatest curiosity of the learned, in the hope of regaining some of the lost works of ancient writers; but though some valuable literary remains of Grecian and Roman antiquity have been more ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... 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

... 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 out on ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... with successive bands of carved pictures and of hieroglyphics. The capital was similarly covered with carved and painted ornament, usually of lotus-flowers or leaves, or alternate stalks of lotus and papyrus. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... representing not only the art and culture, but also the religion of those remote periods, even to the days of Menes, the first recorded king. A wooden statue over four thousand years old, recovered from Memphis, launches one's imagination upon a busy train of thought. Here were curious tables, papyrus, bronze images, mummies, sculptures from stone, objects relating to domestic life, arms, rings, combs, vases, and many other articles which were in use four thousand years ago. By the Boulak Museum it is easily ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... escroue,[71] rag, 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

... river-banks and marshes. Upon these wave the feathery fronds of the tamarisk, and in the stagnant or slowly moving water which fills all the depressions of the soil, aquatic plants, water-lilies, rushes, papyrus, and gigantic reeds spring up in dense masses, and make the low-lying country look like a vast prairie, whose native freshness even the sun at its zenith has no power to destroy. Everywhere else nature is as dreary in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... is not a historical character, for an identical revelation had been received in Babylonia where Israel twice loitered. Moreover, a curious parallelism exists between post-Mosaic prophecy and Egyptian clairvoyance. In a papyrus of the Thotmes III. epoch—about 1600 B.C.—it is written: "The people of the age of the son of man shall rejoice and establish his name forever. They shall be removed from evil and the wicked shall humble their mouths." ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... Scribe is one of the most precious examples the world possesses of an art admirable in its naturalism and power of vivid portraiture, and the charming figure of a priestess, known as Dame Toui, exquisitely wrought in wood, is equally noteworthy. A superb example of a royal papyrus of the Book of the Dead will also invite attention. We pass on through a suite of beautifully decorated rooms filled with a choice collection of Etruscan and Greek Ceramic art, each of which offers a rich feast of beauty ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... 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 ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... silvery teak. The pillars and doors from the gallery into the interior shrines were all gold of varying colours of weather stain. Shaven priests, with cotton robes of many shades of orange, draped like Roman senators, moved about quietly; they had just stopped teaching a class of boys to read from long papyrus leaves—the boys were still there, and seemed to have half possession of the place. Overhead green paroquets screamed, flying to and fro between carved teak foliage and the green palm tops. The interior of the building was all gilded wood—a marvel of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... of the tonal sound of the music which so interested these ancient players and singers. There is, however, an ancient poem, called "The Song of the Harper" found in a papyrus dating from about 1500 B.C., which gives an idea of the sentiments the music was intended to convey. Here it is, from Rawlinson's "History ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... 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 the long bones were undermost, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... committing his effigy to the waves, preceded the joyous celebration of his resurrection, but in Alexandria the sequence was otherwise; the feast began with the solemn and joyous celebration of the nuptials of Adonis and Aphrodite, at the conclusion of which a Head, of papyrus, representing the god, was, with every show of mourning, committed to the waves, and borne within seven days by a current (always to be counted upon at that season of the year) to Byblos, where it was received and welcomed with popular rejoicing.[20] The duration ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... 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 Domini 88.* Thus it is quite ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... nothing of your questions and philosophies," scornfully stormed Cleopatra. "Fire seeks fire, and clay, clay. Isis send me Antony, and every philosopher in Alexandria may go drown in the Nile! Shall I blind my eyes with scrolls of papyrus when there is a goodly Roman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... river, from the port of Ostia, came a big merchant vessel bringing from Constantinople and Egypt, carpets and costly stuffs, richly wrought in gold, filmy tissue and rare embroideries for Roman ladies and papyrus ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... almost to a day, sometimes the length of their lives, but we may well ask whence the chroniclers procured so much precise information. They were in the same position as ourselves with regard to these ancient kings: they knew them by a tradition of a later age, by a fragment papyrus fortuitously preserved in a temple, by accidentally coming across some monument bearing their name, and were reduced, as it were, to put together the few facts which they possessed, or to supply such as were wanting by conjectures, often in a very improbable manner. It is quite possible that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... his 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. Although ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... apt to find in each, more or less, what we ourselves bring to it. Jeremiah, when travelling through Ancient Egypt, felt indignation at the sight of gods with hawks' or jackals' heads; while the touching confessions of the dead, consigned to papyrus—"I have not killed! I have not been idle! I have not caused others to weep!"—only drew from him exclamations of anger and contempt. Herodotus, a century later, also understood nothing of this world of mysterious tombs, with its moral teachings thousands of years ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... on, Thinking, until she reached a place of palms, And all the earth was sandy where she walked,— Sandy and dry,—strewed with papyrus leaves, Old idols, rings and pottery, painted lids Of mummies (for perhaps it was the way That leads to dead old Egypt), and withal Excellent sunshine cut out sharp and clear The hot prone pillars, and the carven plinths,— Stone lotus cups, with petals ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... Wiener Zeitschrift fuer die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vol. XI, p. 13; Fuehrer durch die Papyrus-Ausstellung Erzherzog Rainer, ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... in which 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... old Egyptian, who in primaeval Hierapolis incased his thought in papyrus, to be able now to take a stroll into the Bibliotheque, and to see what has become of his thought so far as there represented. He would find that it had haunted mankind ever since. An alcove would be filled with commentaries on it, and discussions as to where it came from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... every tooth of the saw, and now convinced that it was 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 of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... prevailed from a remote antiquity. The papyrus was also used for hieratic writing, and numerous papyri have been discovered, which show some advance in literature. Astronomy was cultivated by the priests, and was carried to the highest point it could attain without modern instruments. Geometry also reached considerable perfection. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... 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 well-being of a world ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... sold him the powder that he came to me, as his medical adviser, to ask my opinion as to the advisability of taking some of it. He brought with him a paper purporting to be the translation of an ancient papyrus manuscript, the original of which was in Thibetian or Sanscrit and which was ingenious, if fraudulent. He told me a rambling story of how this Rengee Sing had procured this powder, and the whole thing was so peculiar that I decided to interview the gentleman myself; but first I made a point ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... which have come down to us. Poor and superstitious persons, especially, had recourse to dreams, to wizards, to donations, to sacred animals, and to exvotos to the gods. Charms were also written for the credulous, some of which have been found on small pieces of papyrus, which were rolled up and worn, as by ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... 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 openings ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... certain of the Egyptians; and when the King's magicians followed suit it swallowed up all others. Its next exploit was to turn the Nile and other waters of Egypt into blood (Exod. vii. 17). The third wonder was worked by Moses' staff, the dividing of the Red Sea (read the Sea of Sedge or papyrus, which could never have grown in the brine of the Suez Gulf) according to the command, "Lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea," etc. (Exod. xiv. 15). The fourth adventure was when the rod, wherewith Moses smote the river, struck two blows on the rock in Horeb and caused ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... red 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, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... to literature for 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

... the papyrus, and, with an amused smile, took a penknife out of his robe and began to slice the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... the fulfilment of blessed hope, the 'appearance of the glory of the great God and our Saviour,' or else, as is said in this same Book of Proverbs: 'The hope of the godless' shall be like one of those water plants, the papyrus or the flag, which, when the water is taken away, 'withereth up before any other herb.' It is for us to determine whether the afterwards that we must enter upon shall be the land in which our hopes shall blossom and fruit, and blossom again immortally, or whether we shall leave behind us, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the woods of palms and sycamores, the thickets of jasmines and odoriferous shrubs, the vast plains, with pools and lakes well stocked with fish, the thousand canals intersecting the land, and crowned with papyrus and reeds, they, feeling the influence of a rich climate and a beautiful sky, could not find words sufficiently strong to express their admiration ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... 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 ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... position as to catch the light which entered through the heavily leaded casement. On the window-seat below them, a pile of Plantins and Elzevirs threatened to bury a steel casket. On the table, several rolls of vellum and papyrus, peeping from metal cylinders, leant against a row of brass-bound folios. A handsome fur covering masked the truckle-bed, but this, too, bore its share of books, as did two or three long trunks covered with stamped and gilded leather which stood against the wall and were so long that ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... laborious agricultural 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 capable ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... 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 of Getulia, the wool of Miletus, the plaids of Gaul. Thus we ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Martian woman sat in a rocking chair in the shade of the porch. She held a bowl of purple river apples in her lap. Her papyrus-like hands moved quickly as she shaved the skin from one. In a matter of seconds it was peeled. She looked up over her ...
— One Martian Afternoon • Tom Leahy

... 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 ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... you understand 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, "those are ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... 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

... 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 ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... what that goal is to be! I mean, of course, as far as this world is concerned. Ever since man first scratched hieroglyphics upon an ostracon, or scribbled with sepia upon papyrus, he must have wondered, as we wonder to-day. I suppose that we DO know a little more than they. We have an arc of about three thousand years given us, from which to calculate out the course to be described by our descendants; but that arc is so tiny when ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... years he exerted himself strenuously in raising the tone of the drama. His love of the classics never left him. We know he was fond of quoting those incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and that he was prominent in the 'papyrus-craze.' Indeed, he inspired Society with a love of something more than mere pleasure, a love of the 'humaner delights.' He was a giver of tone. At his coming, the bluff, disgusting ways of the Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid graces ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... pillared halls, where the carved columns seemed like a forest of stone. Pyramids rose as mountains, and their alabaster-covered sides flashed back the splendor of the cloudless skies. The land bloomed as a garden. The papyrus grew by the banks of the Nile. The fisheries of the mighty river filled the treasury of kings with a ceaseless income. Art, literature, knowledge and culture were enthroned supreme—yet was it a land of false gods and a people ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... as well as common sense? We have the authority of Herodotus! When he informs us that the Phoenicians communicated letters to the Ionians, he adds, that by a very ancient custom the Ionians called their books diptherae, or skins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus was scarce [168], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep—a custom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations. Were such materials used only for inscriptions relative to a religious dedication, or a political compact? NO; for then, wood or stone—the temple or ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... contemplating 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 ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 and all the golds of Creation were surely met together in this profound retreat to prove ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... Potiphar's house. 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 ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... he was 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

... science, 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

... trade of Arabia and India flowed through the port of Alexandria, to the capital and provinces of the empire. [1711] Idleness was unknown. Some were employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of linen, others again manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or the lame want occupations suited to their condition. [172] But the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... temples and tombs with their imperishable colors? Did not women paint those pictures of Isis—goddess of Sothis—that are like precursors of the pictures of the Immaculate Conception? Surely we may hope that a papyrus will be brought to light that will reveal to us the part that women had in the decoration of the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... finding it,—that every stroke of the intellectual pick turns up a golden nugget; but do not make the mistake of supposing that all the wisdom of the world is bound in calf. You may know all that was ever penned in papyrus or graved on stone, written on tablets of clay or preserved in print and still be ignorant—not even know how to manage a husband. As a rule people read without proper discrimination, and those ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... done for preserving objects. Papyrus rolls should be wrapped at once in a damp handkerchief, to be carried, and then wrapped in paper, packed in a tin box, and filled round with cotton wool. Small papyri can be safely damped in a wet cloth, and flattened out between the leaves of a book; secure one edge straight in the hinge, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... 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 nearness to our own days. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... the first glint from the huge marble lighthouse standing 400 feet high upon the island of Pharos, you arrived at Alexandria, the second city of the Roman world and the great emporium for the trade of Egypt, of all Eastern Africa as far as Zanzibar, and of India. From it came the papyrus paper, delicate glass-work, muslin, embroidered cloths, and such additions to luxury as roses out of season. Alexandria, built like Antioch on a rectangular plan, with its chief streets 100 feet in width, contained a Jewish quarter, controlled by a Jewish headman ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... vanilla, the guava, the cork, the almond, the mulberry, the mango, the sandalwood! There were great screw-pines, lignum-vitae, mahogany, mimosa, magnolia trees; and the tree-fern, the giant creeper, the panama-hat plant, the Peruvian cactus, the papyrus, the pineapple, and a great collection of orchids. Only the sunshine and the moisture of Ceylon could produce such a result. A tree cared for from its first sprouting, and favored by the elements, becomes a wonder ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... general term for almost any water-loving, grassy plant, and so it is used by Shakespeare. In the Bible it is perhaps possible to identify some of the Reeds mentioned, with the Sugar Cane in some places, with the Papyrus in others, and in others with the Arundo donax. As a Biblical plant it has a special interest, not only as giving the emblem of the tenderest mercy that will be careful even of "the bruised Reed," but also as entering largely into ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... 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 one side, to sustain the tender pith; ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... the first words of the Bible on rolls of papyrus paper with a soft reed pen, in the manner of the ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... level, well-watered valley, along the borders of these vast beds of papyrus and rushes intersected by winding, hidden streams, Joshua and his fierce clans of fighting men met the Kings of the north with their horses and chariots, "at the waters of Merom," in the last great battle for the possession of the Promised Land. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

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

... 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, and cranes ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... 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 constructed from it. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... 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 ...
— HE • Andrew Lang

... is along the shore to Ngombo promontory, 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 Panthunda's village by a brook called Lilole. Another ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... 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 ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... 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] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... and houses (which can be made from it in 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

... reconstructions 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. ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... I said. “But if you found a Yiddish newspaper or an Egyptian papyrus under his pillow I should not ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were 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 to be used as the eyes which see not; carved gourds were there, and calabashes; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... 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

... especially in the vicinity of Acanthus: planks of small dimensions were cut from this tree, which were fastened together, or rather laid over one another, like tiles, with a great number of wooden pins: they used no ribs in the construction of their vessels: on the inside, papyrus was employed for the purpose of stopping up the crevices, or securing the joints. There was but one rudder; whereas the ships of the Greeks and Romans had generally two; this passed quite through the keel. The mast was made of Egyptian thorn, and the sail of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... Magazine of Natural History contains an article of great interest, on Vessels made of the Papyrus, illustrated with cuts, from which it appears that vessels have from the earliest times, been formed from the paper reed, and that they are at present in use in Egypt and Abyssinia. The author is John Hogg, Esq. M.A. F.L.S. &c. whose antiquarian attainments have ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... the settlement is on the right 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 is a mere platform ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... 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

... in which men have for thousands of years reckoned as very precious that upon which subsequent generations scarcely deigned to glance, nor do we know enough of the life of the ancient Egyptians to be able positively to assert that every object in the inscriptions and papyrus-rolls means this or that. It is therefore very possible that in many of the Egyptian inscriptions which have come down to us a great deal is told of the stones found here on the Elgon, whilst we, misled by the great value which the narrator ascribes ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... written records were supplemented by oral descriptions, and the two methods in conjunction formed the Aztec literature. Paper for such documents were made of skins, or cotton cloth, or of the fibrous leaves of the maguey, and this last, a species of "papyrus," was carefully prepared, and was of a durable nature. Aztec literature of this nature existed in considerable quantities at the beginning of the Hispanic occupation. It was thoroughly destroyed by the execrable act of ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... 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

... equestrian order. Two legions only were stationed in that province. Being the centre of the trade between Italy and the Indies, Egypt accumulated great wealth, and was renowned for its extensive commerce. It exported large quantities of corn to Italy, and also papyrus, the best writing material then known. The two finest kinds of papyrus were named the Augustan and the Livian. Alexandria, the sea-port of Egypt, was the second city of the empire. Its commerce was immense; and its museum, colleges, library, and literary ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... story of the Exodus—as detailed in a recently discovered papyrus which neither Brugsch nor Maspero have as ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... had gone he sat down to the old bureau, took out a sheaf of papers, some white and new, others yellow-grey with age, and yet others which were sheets of the ancient papyrus. The writing on these was in the old Hermetic character; of the rest some were in cursive Greek and some in Coptic. A few only were in English, and about half a dozen in Russian. He read them all with equal ease, and although ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... walls have taken the place of the protecting barrier, but the spring bubbles up to this day, and Ortygia (Quail Island) is the name still given to that part of Syracuse. Fluffy-headed, long, green stalks of papyrus grow in the fountain, and red and golden fish dart through its clear water. Beyond lie the low shores of Plemmgrium, the fens of Lysimeleia, the hills above the Anapus, and above all towers Etna, in snowy and magnificent ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... being done by Xerxes thus; and meanwhile he caused ropes also to be prepared for the bridges, made of papyrus and of white flax, 26 appointing this to the Phenicians and Egyptians; and also he was making preparations to store provisions for his army on the way, that neither the army itself nor the baggage animals might suffer from scarcity, as they made their ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... in the Boston Transcript a long letter from Mr. Gliddon, telling the whole story, which the latest and complete examinations of papyrus, straps, bandages, &c. have unfolded about his mummy early this summer in Boston. It seems the said mummy was all right, in the right coffin duly embalmed; the body being that of a priest who died about B. C. 900. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... Elysian Fields of the Egyptians according to the Papyrus of Ani. 1. Ani adoring the gods of Sekhet-Aaru. 2. Ani reaping in the Other World. 3. Ani ploughing in the Other World. 4. The abode of the perfect spirits, and the ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... who grew up a strong and vigorous man, and although he was but half royal, founded a new dynasty in Egypt and became my forefather. This necklace lay upon her breast, and beneath it a writing on papyrus, which said that when the half of it which was lost should be joined again to that half, then those who had worn them would meet once more as mortals. Now the two halves of the necklace have met, and we have met as God decreed, and it is one and we are one for ever and for ever, let every ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... that was as musical as a bird's song—"They are rare and curious. See you!—the names of the scribes and the dates of issue are all distinct. Ah!—the treasures of poetry enshrined within these pages! ... was ever papyrus so gemmed with pearls of thought and wisdom?—If there were a next world, my friend,"—and here he placed his hand familiarly on his guest's shoulder, while the bright, steel-gray under-gleam sparkled in his splendid eyes— "'twould be worth dwelling ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... 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 many of which there is an unconscious ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... shelving along the walls loaded with innumerable rolls of wall-paper. Who was responsible for this moribund stock I could never discover. Perhaps the mad artist imagined them to be priceless Kakemonos of such transcendent and blinding beauty that he did not dare unroll them. They resembled a library of papyrus manuscripts. Here and there among them stood some exquisitely hideous dragon or bird of misfortune. He had a bench in the store too, I remember, and seemed to have some sort of business in mending such things for ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... faith is our faith today. Of King Unas, who lived in the third millennium, it is written: "Behold, thou hast not gone as one dead, but as one living." Nor has any one in our day set forth this faith with more simple eloquence than the Hymn to Osiris, in the Papyrus of Hunefer. So in the Pyramid Texts the dead are spoken of as Those Who Ascend, the Imperishable Ones who shine as stars, and the gods are invoked to witness the death of the King "Dawning as a Soul." There is deep prophecy, albeit touched ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... No. 170, we have the representation of a river with papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... 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 the sound of human voices reached our ears, and we saw ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston

... this endurance, this secular survival of belief, may be more instructive and is certainly more entertaining than a world of assertions. In his Etudes Egyptiennes (Tome i. fascic. 2) M. Maspero publishes the text and translation of a papyrus fragment. This papyrus was discovered still attached to a statuette in wood, representing 'the singer of Ammen, Kena,' in ceremonial dress. The document is a letter written by an ancient Egyptian scribe, 'To the Instructed Khou of the Dame Onkhari,' his ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... dressing-gown, and said, "Come in; I have something curious to show you." Astronomical signs are frequently found on ancient Egyptian monuments, and were supposed to have been employed by the priests to record dates. Now Dr. Young had received a papyrus from Egypt, sent to him by Mr. Salt, who had found it in a mummy-case; and that very evening he had proved it to be a horoscope of the age of the Ptolemies, and had determined the date from the configuration of the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... board as PRESENTS. I had instructed Ibrahim to accompany us as my servant, as he was better than most of the men in the event of a row; and I had given orders that, in case of a preconcerted signal being given, the whole force should swim the river, supporting themselves and guns upon bundles of papyrus rush. The men thought us perfectly mad, and declared that we should be murdered immediately when on the other side; however, they prepared for crossing the river in case ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... (for murder) In those days men wept, as well as women Lovers delighted in nature then as now Multitude who, like the gnats, fly towards every thing brilliant Olympics—The first was fixed 776 B.C. Papyrus Ebers Pious axioms to be repeated by the physician, while compounding Romantic love, as we know it, a result of Christianity True host puts an end to the banquet Whether the historical romance is ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger

... 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

... 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, on whom he had had occasion to make a post-mortem examination. The woman had suffered from ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... to account. It is maintained by some that leather was the original writing-material of the Hebrews; others, again, give their vote in favor of linen, though the Talmud does not mention the latter material in connection with writing. Some time after Alexander the Great, the Egyptian papyrus became common in Palestine, where it probably was known earlier, as Jewish letters on papyrus were sent to Jerusalem from the Fayyum in the fifth century B.C.E. Even as late as Maimonides, the scrolls of the Law were written on leather, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... 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 drone among the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... said, 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

... but the incident was soon forgotten in the advancing prosperity of the bank. The place is in ruins, but we saw the "paying teller's gun," which was a decorated club with spikes on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault, covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her landing. The ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... to astonish and illumine the world. And Egypt is now in revolt from the Persian; and intercourse with her is easier than ever before in historical times; and the triremes, besides what spiritual cargoes they may be bringing in from her, are bringing in cargoes of honest material papyrus to tempt men to write down their thoughts.—So the flowering of Greece became inevitable; the Law intended it, and brought about ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... treatise extant is an Egyptian papyrus probably written sixteen centuries before our era. It shows that the heart, vessels, liver, spleen, kidneys, ureters and bladder were recognized, and that the blood-vessels were known to come from the heart. Other vessels are described, some carrying air, some mucus, while two ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 liberating faint perfumes of the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... their troubles then as now. To take this man who loved his slippers and easy-chair, and who was happy with a roll of papyrus, and plunge him into a seething pot of politics, not to mention matrimony, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... Moses[48] "was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds." At his day pagan hieratic and hieroglyphic symbols only were written on papyrus, or carved ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... clay tablets and discs (so far in Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin, papyrus, &c.; engraved gems and gem impressions; legends written with pigment on pottery (rare); characters incised on stone or pottery. These show two main systems of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 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 ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... Stradivarius was warping apart, and a Gutenberg was swollen to twice its size, its moldy pages curling away from the parent-book. The books had fared worse. Great stacks of leather-covered libraries were turning into moldy, starchy mounds. Papyrus and lambskin scrolls were falling apart. Once, when they stopped for Wolden to thrust some moldy folds of Hindu thread-of-gold weaving from their path, Odin stopped and picked up the cover of a book. It was soggy and faded. But he could make out the ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... Pisistratidae. The Hymn to Aphrodite is just such a lay as the Phaeacian minstrel sang at the feast of Alcinous, in the hearing of Odysseus. Finally Baumeister supposes our collection not to have been made by learned editors, like Aristarchus and Zenodotus, but committed confusedly from memory to papyrus by some amateur. The conventional attribution of the Hymns to Homer, in spite of linguistic objections, and of many allusions to things unknown or unfamiliar in the Epics, is merely the result of the tendency to set down "masterless" compositions ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... 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, to spend a good part of their ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... Wales, who trace their descent until it is lost in the mists of antiquity. A genealogical tree beginning with Shem is in the possession of the family, and is stated by a legend of many thousand years' date to have been drawn on papyrus by a grandson of the patriarch himself. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt of the immense antiquity ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of 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 ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... trace by telescope the fringe of tall papyrus rush that should be the border of the White Nile; but this may be a delusion. The wind is S.W., dead against us. Many men are sick owing to the daily work of clearing a channel through the poisonous marsh. This is the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... 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 other thing he ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... 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

... accounts these 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 was common. For white, the finely ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... afternoon, Professor 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 him by one of his ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... authorities 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 (Munro, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... their originality was not inspired by libraries. Can we imagine Mohammed poring over ancient manuscripts in order to obtain the required knowledge and impetus for his new religion? With Buddha was it not 1 per cent papyrus roll and 99 per cent meditation? When St. Paul was struck down on the way to Damascus, he did not repair to the nearest Jewish seminary to read up prophecy. He says: "I went into Arabia." The desert solitude was the only place in which to find a rationale of his new ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... 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 ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... sycamore here and there. A noise of bells, drums, and singers resounds at a distance. These are caused by people who are going down from Canopus to sleep at the Temple of Serapis. Antony is aware of this, and he glides, driven by the wind, between the two banks of the canal. The leaves of the papyrus and the red blossoms of the water-lilies, larger than a man, bend over him. He lies extended at the bottom of the vessel. An oar from behind drags through the water. From time to time rises a hot breath of air that shakes the thin ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... 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

... 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 le Papyrus Prisse, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... their civilising influence, China, would for ever fix their literature—poetry, history and criticism,[FN230] the apologue and the anecdote. To mention no others The Lion and the Mouse appears in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C 1200-1166 the days of Rameses III. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and early attempt, but in a finished form, postulating an ancient origin and illustrious ancestry. The dialogue also is brought to perfection in the discourse between the Jackal Koufi and the Ethiopian ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... accounts much resorted to by mariners, and enriched with offerings. Here were deposited charts of the coast, and of the navigation of the Nile, which were engraved on pillars, and in aftertimes sketched out upon the Nilotic Papyrus. There is likewise reason to think that they were sometimes delineated upon walls. This leads me to take notice of a passage from Pherecydes Syrus, which seems to allude to something of this nature: though, I believe, in his short detail ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... tire us— First graven in symbols of stone— Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus And parchment, and scattered and blown By the winds of the tongues of all nations, Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled Down the rack of a hundred translations, From the ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... 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 ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... the Druids. Even Panini never alludes to written words or letters. None of the ordinary modern words for book, paper, ink, or writing have been found in any ancient Sanskrit work. No such words as volumen, volume; liber, or inner bark of a tree; byblos, inner bark of papyrus; or book, that is beech wood. But Buddha had learnt to write, as we find by a book translated into Chinese A.D. 76. In this book Buddha instructs his teacher; as in the "Gospel of the Infancy" Jesus ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... culture, Herculaneum was the residence place of the gentry, people who possessed libraries, the records of which can be in many cases deciphered, and from which we might hope to obtain some of the lost treasures of antiquity. The papyrus rolls on which the books of that day were written, though charred by heat and time, are ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... on papyrus leaves: I had seen the papyrus at the Liverpool Botanic Garden, and had wondered how the stiff bark could be rolled up; and here I saw that it is not rolled up, but cut in strips and fastened with strings at ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... all time by the earliest known map. It has survived; whilst those of the Milesian Anaximander (B.C. 610- 547), of Hekataeus (ob. B.C. 4 76), also from Miletus and called the "Father of Geography" (Ebers), and of Ptolemy the Pelusian are irretrievably lost. A papyrus in the Turin Museum contains a plan of the mineral region spoken of in two stelo, those of Radesiyyah and Kuban, describing the supply of drinking-water introduced into the desert between Kuban ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... entirely inoffensive and matter of course, called them "the Jesus Christ birds," because they walked on the water. There was a wealth of strange bird life in the neighborhood. There were large papyrus- marshes, the papyrus not being a fifth, perhaps not a tenth, as high as in Africa. In these swamps were many blackbirds. Some uttered notes that reminded me of our own redwings. Others, with crimson heads and necks and thighs, fairly blazed; often a dozen sat together on a swaying papyrus-stem ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being to thee; he is the Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not." A papyrus now in Paris, dating 2300 B.C., contains quotations from two much older records, one a writing of the time of King Suffern, about 3500 B.C., which says: "The operation of God is a thing which cannot be understood." ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... only the showers of ashes, but also inundations from molten lava; and the streams referred to must be considered as destined for that city rather than for Pompeii. Volcanic lightnings were evidently among the engines of ruin at Pompeii. Papyrus, and other of the more inflammable materials, are found in a burned state. Some substances in metal are partially melted; and a bronze statue is completely shivered, as by lightning. Upon the whole—excepting only the inevitable poetic license of shortening ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

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

... have been useless anyhow. There was only one passenger, and that a baby boy. But the Mayflower that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to America carried not so precious a load. The boat was made of the broad leaves of papyrus tightened together by bitumen. Boats were sometimes made of that material, as we learn from Pliny, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... addition to the ruins of Palenque, on this our continent, there are pyramids larger than those of Sachara in Egypt, at Cholula, Otamba, Paxaca, Mitlan, Tlascola, and on the mountains of Tescoca, together with hieroglyphics, planispheres and zodiacs, a symbolic and Photenic alphabet; papyrus, metopes, triglyphs, and temples and buildings of immense grandeur; military roads, aqueducts, viaducts, posting stations and distances; bridges of great grandeur and massive character, all presenting the most positive evidences of the existence of a powerful ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... 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. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... 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 denarii ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... 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 and ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... 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 who went ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... fountain in our garden, With the brightest bluest tiles And the pleasantest stone lion Who spits into it and smiles! It's shaded by papyrus And reeds and grasses tall, Just a little land-locked ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... 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 persons at desks poring over them. Absolute ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... of cork dusk shadows throw, There vine-leaves lightsome sway, While chestnut-plumes serenely glow Above the olives gray; Tall pines upon the sloping meads Their sylvan domes uprear, And rankly the papyrus-reeds Low ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... 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, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg



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



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