The Pharaoh's Treasure
The Origins of Paper and the Rise of Western Civilization
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
For our entire history, humans have always searched for new ways to share information. This innate compulsion led to the origin of writing on the rock walls of caves and coffin lids or carving on tablets. But it was with the advent of papyrus paper when the ability to record and transmit information exploded, allowing for an exchanging of ideas, from the banks of the Nile throughout the Mediterranean - and the civilized world - for the first time in human history.??In THE PHARAOHíS TREASURE, John Gaudet looks at this pivotal transition to paper, which would become the most commonly used information medium in the world for more than 4,000 years. Far from fragile, papyrus paper is an especially durable writing surface; books and documents in ancient and medieval times had a usable life of hundreds of years, and this durability has allowed items like the famous Nag Hammadi codices from the third and fourth century to survive. The story of this material, that was prized by both scholars and kings, reveals how paper communication is more than a relic of our past, but a key to understanding how ideas and information shaped humanity both in the ancient and early modern world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ecologist and papyrus expert Gaudet (Papyrus: The Plant That Changed the World) gives a fascinating, thought-provoking history of papyrus's use in communication. He maintains that humanity's "habit and expectation of writing things down became a hallmark of civilized life... thanks to papyrus." His accessible and engagingly written account begins with the earliest known use of papyrus as a writing surface, during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu in the 26th century BCE. Recently discovered documents show it was used to track deliveries of limestone for the construction of the Great Pyramid. The technology spread beyond the Egyptians; papyri served as diaries, property records, census rolls, scientific and medical texts, and legal documents for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Papyrus paper became so vital that when supplies ran short in the Roman Empire in the first century CE, rationing was imposed to avoid significant disruptions to daily life. Gaudet calls upon a wide array of sources, both ancient texts and modern historians and archeologists, to support his contention persuasively. This argument that the use of papyrus for writing was a "key element of global cultural advancement" is an appealing addition to the genre of single-topic histories such as Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History. Illus.
