A Story Outline of Evolution 



that still exists with the records thereon after a period of 

 more than 5,000 years. This primitive paper was made by 

 cutting the pith of the stocks into strips which were placed 

 side by side on a flat, smooth surface and over the layers 

 thus formed, a second layer was placed at right angles to 

 the first. The whole was then pressed, dried and smoothed. 

 The natural gum of the strips glued them tightly together. 

 The sheets thus made were white in color when new, but like 

 the paper of today they turned brown with age. The aver- 

 age lengths of these sheets were from nine to fifteen inches 

 and the average widths were from six to nine inches, while 

 in rare cases they were as much as seventeen inches in width. 

 The finest papyri are found in the "Book of the Dead," 

 where the sheets are fifteen inches wide. These sheets were 

 doubtless constructed and cut to meet the conditions of 

 trade just as paper is prepared and cut today. The sheets 

 were often joined to make a roll. These rolls ran in length 

 from a few feet to more than one hundred feet. The rolls 

 used by the Greeks were seldom more than thirty feet in 

 length while some of the Egyptian manuscripts were more 

 than one hundred feet in length. These long sheets were 

 wound on cylinders of wood or ivory in the same fashion as 

 are our window shades of today. It was largely on these 

 papyri rolls, thus made, that a record was made and kept 

 and handed down to us giving in detail many of the earliest 

 recorded achievements of man. Edward Clodd, in "The 

 Story of the Alphabet," states — "The earliest known speci- 

 men of hieratic writing is a papyrus containing chronicles 

 of the reign of King Asa, whose date, according to a moder- 

 ate estimate of Egyptian chronology, is about 3580 B. C." 



[54] 



