Papyrus Plants in Egypt - And Books And Coins

[Guest guest]

Wow. Splendid information.

Butch, it is such a pleasure to be allowed

the drippings from your well-stocked mind.

 

I love stuff like this.

 

Ien in the Kootenays So little time! So much to learn!

*****************************

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hey Kathleen,

 

> Pressed Banana Leaf? Now that's just WRONG!

 

Yep .. but its a norm (in poor countries that cater to rich tourists) to

get the most bang for their buck. Some tourists don't know the real

value of this and that .. others do .. and are a bit greedy. The latter

group are ones I don't mind seeing the poor folks take to the cleaners.

Papyrus is NOT inexpensive .. so if the price seems to hard to believe

its best if we don't believe it. ;-)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus

 

http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/papyrus.html

 

A bit of trivia for those who like same ;-) and perhaps good material

for the many home schooling parents on this list .. on the Hellenistic

era (336-27 B.C.) in what is now the Republic of Turkey.

 

This concerns the invention of what we now think of as " books " .

 

From http://www.uh.edu/engines/tlatalk.htm .. on books..

 

" And so we come to another technology -- to the book. Its story began in

Pergamon -- then one of the largest cities in the world. Now it's called

Bergama. It's in Western Turkey -- South of Istanbul and North of Izmir.

It sits on a hill, 16 miles from the Aegean Sea.

 

Pergamon became capital of the Attalid dynasty after 280 BC. It was one

of two great centers in the cosmopolitan world that formed after

Alexander died. The other was Alexandria, in Egypt. The Attalids took

their name from King Attalus, who reigned till just after 200 BC.

 

Attalus began an artistic renaissance in Pergamon. His son, Eumenes,

continued it. Eumenes set out to build the greatest library in the

world. He meant to outdo the famous library in Alexandria.

 

What followed was the stuff of black comedy. His soldiers ranged the

land stealing books. Book lovers buried what they could in secret hiding

places. Pergamon scribes forged manuscripts. The library grew to 200,000

volumes.

 

Egypt didn't take all that lying down. She quit supplying papyrus to

Pergamon. That could've ended Pergamon's pretensions. But Pergamon

scholars had an ace up their sleeve. They had a rich wool industry. They

had plenty of sheep. They'd already begun writing on sheepskin, or

vellum. They called the stuff Charta Pergamene. That meant paper of

Pergamon. The words Charta Pergamene mutated into parchment.

 

It's harder to roll parchment into a scroll than it is papyrus. So

someone thought of folding parchment into rectangular pages and sewing

those gatherings together. Someone invented the codex -- the modern book.

 

Soon after that, both Pergamon and Egypt fell under Roman control. Then,

in 40 BC, Roman soldiers in Egypt accidentally burned part of

Alexandria's library. Anthony, in his obsessive love for Cleopatra, did

a remarkable thing. To repay the loss he gave her the Pergamon Library.

 

So we remember Alexandria and forget Pergamon. But their brief

competition changed human history. Pergamon had given us the most

efficient information storage technology ever known.

 

This was one of the few times a new user interface was good enough to

change the technological metaphor. Bear in mind that the scroll still

survives, even to this day, as its own technological metaphor. But the

book -- the codex -- became metaphor unto itself. It well may be the

most powerful technological metaphor of them all.

 

Once a technology finds that place of metaphor in our psyche, its

outward form will survive. The user interface will not be given up.

 

Remember what happened when Gutenberg began printing with movable metal

type. He made print look just like the work of scribes. He was

counterfeiting manuscript books. It often takes a trained eye to tell an

early printed book from a manuscript book. And books today still keep

most of those features. We still fold pages into gatherings, sew

gatherings together, and lace them between hard covers. Movable metal

type made books cheap and abundant. Yet we readers still receive

information the same way they did in Pergamon, 2000 years ago. "

 

http://www.allaboutturkey.com/pergamum.htm

 

What they merely touched on was .. when the Egyptians stop the export of

papyrus to Ancient Turkey, and Antonius gave the 200,000 volumes in the

Library of Pergamon to Cleopatra as a wedding gift, and the Pergameneans

decided to use bound animal skins with a cover .. the books were hand

written but they were the first use of what we think of as bound books.

 

More trivia on Pergamon:

 

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/siteindex?lookup=Pergamon

 

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~prchrdsn/pergamon.htm

 

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/siteindex?lookup=Pergamon

 

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/patlas?redraw.x=1 & redraw.y=1 & plot=tgn%2C701\

6140

 

 

 

Even more interesting trivia (to me) concerns the invention of coins.

This too occurred in what is now the Republic of Turkey.

 

http://rg.ancients.info/lion/article.html

 

http://coins.about.com/library/weekly/aa081800a.htm

 

This revolutionized the trade industry in that for long distance trades,

buyers could more easily carry coins than they could trade goods.

 

Its not for nothing that the area of Anatolia has long been called the

" Cradle of Civilization. "

 

> And you betcha I'd be looking for some of that stuff. If I ever get to

> go, I'll remember that one!

 

Most American visitors to Egypt try to buy a piece so they can frame it

and decorate a wall. Visitors to Turkey should also be careful if they

roam any of the ancient cities .. odds are they will be approached by a

dirty little urchin who will show them what appears to be an ancient

coin and the kid will ask if its valuable .. he'll say he found it in

the ruins. Some tourists see this as an opportunity to get a lot for a

little so they'll offer the kid $5 or $10 and he'll sell it. Over the

hill his pappa is producing them in his mold .. then burying them in

sheep blood or some other liquid that will give the new coin an ancient

look in a few weeks.

 

However, IF someone does come across a real ancient treasure in Turkey

and they buy it .. they'll probably get to see the inside of a Turkish

jail if they are caught trying to take it out. ;-) The government long

ago put a stop to the rape of its antiquities .. most of the fine art

and expensive treasures of ancient Turkey are now displayed in museums

throughout the West .. they were taken at the time of the decline of the

Ottoman Empire .. perhaps with the knowledge of some of the weak Sultans

or their cohorts. Many Western countries have returned such items and

the Turkish government has many lawsuits against this or that museum.

America, the UK and some of the other European countries have returned

items without pressure .. but some .. like Russia .. are not going to

let go of them even if the World Court demands it. Likewise, the

gigantic Altar of Pergamos was dismantled and shipped and is still

displayed in Berlin State Museum, Germany. You can see the Alter here

http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/charts/pergamon.html

 

http://www.ourfatherlutheran.net/biblehomelands/sevenchurches/pergamum/pergamum.\

htm

 

> Gotta run, heater man is coming to day to ruin my life for the next two.

> But at least We'll be warm... although with the gas company promising prices

> going up 70% this winter, we prolly won't be VERY warm.

 

Good luck .. I reckon I'm lucky in that regard. I use natural gas for

cooking, heating and hot water .. and even in the coldest times my bill

runs around $80-$90 a month. :-) But .. gasoline costs us around $5 a

gallon .. still cheaper than most of Europe and Greece .. and maybe it

will be cheaper than the USA in time. ;-)

 

> K

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

>>If you decide to purchase papyrus .. make sure it has the government

>>seal on it .. otherwise .. it will be pressed and beaten banana leaf.

>>

>>Butch .. http://www.AV-AT.com .. my wholesale/retail store is in

>>Maryland .. but I'm grinning in beautiful downtown Ankara, Turkey.