Papyrus & Scrolls

Before the page there was the roll. Egyptian papyrus made from a river reed, the Dead Sea Scrolls sealed in jars, the carbonised Herculaneum library now being read by particle accelerator and machine learning, and the slow shift from the scroll to the bound codex that changed how anyone could look something up.

Part of Books

63 moments in this segment.

  1. - Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes). Papyrus, funerary, Book of the Dead, Imouthes, Imhotep, Imuthes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Egyptian Art). Papyrus, ink. Digitised image of the artefact itself; dated to the object, ca. 332–200 BCE.
  2. - Muziris Papyrus P.Vindob. G 40822 verso Austrian National Library. Verso side of the Muziris Papyrus (P.Vindob. G 40822), a Greek papyrus document of the mid-2nd century CE preserved in the Austrian National Library. The verso contains an account of Indian cargo from the ship Hermapollon, including Gangetic nard.
  3. - Funerary Papyrus of Tayuhenutmut (1894.180). Potent symbols, sacred words, and divine protection helped ancient Egyptians transition from the earthly realm to an eternal existence. Interactions between mortals and the gods were depicted on funerary objects including papyri, like this example made for temple singer Tayu-henut-Mut (“the mistress of [the goddess] Mut”). This papyrus shows Tayu-henut-Mut standing with raised hands before an offe
  4. - Papyrus with the Instruction of Amenemope. (1077-664 BC). It was discovered at Thebes, and was purchased by the British Museum through Wallis Budge in 1888.
  5. - Entire Tanakh scroll set. A Hebrew biblical manuscript or scroll, the text tradition copied by hand for two millennia.
  6. - Isaiah scroll. A Hebrew biblical manuscript or scroll, the text tradition copied by hand for two millennia.
  7. - Zürich, Braginsky Collection, B93 page 32. A Hebrew illuminated manuscript, a marriage contract or festival scroll, from the Braginsky Collection.
  8. - A Qur'an scroll (tumar) commissioned for Ghiyath al-Din Sultan Muhammad ibn Sultan Eretna, signed Mubarakshah. 'ABDULLAH, EASTERN ANATOLIA, DATED AH 754/1353-54 AD Arabic manuscript on buff paper, the beginning with a series of alternated round and rectangular panels heavily and elegantly illuminated in gold, silver and polychrome and including religious invocations and names of God, flanked
  9. - Folio 5 reverso de la Tira de Tepechpan. A page from a Mesoamerican pictorial codex, the Aztec and colonial-Mexican book form combining image and glyph.
  10. - Palm-leaf Manuscripts - Flickr - sajinrajknilambur. A palm-leaf manuscript from South or Southeast Asia: text incised into dried palm leaf with a stylus and inked, then strung between wooden boards.
  11. - A palm leaf Sanskrit manuscript in Brahmi script from Miran China. A palm-leaf manuscript from South or Southeast Asia: text incised into dried palm leaf with a stylus and inked, then strung between wooden boards.
  12. - Palm leaf manuscripts which were used by Ezhuthachan(Kadupattan). A palm-leaf manuscript from South or Southeast Asia: text incised into dried palm leaf with a stylus and inked, then strung between wooden boards.
  13. - Palm-leaf manuscript in the National Library of China. A palm-leaf manuscript from South or Southeast Asia: text incised into dried palm leaf with a stylus and inked, then strung between wooden boards.
  14. - Palm-leaf manuscripts - batticaloa museum. A palm-leaf manuscript from South or Southeast Asia: text incised into dried palm leaf with a stylus and inked, then strung between wooden boards.
  15. - Kettuba Venezia 1684. A Hebrew illuminated manuscript, a marriage contract or festival scroll, from the Braginsky Collection.
  16. - Krym 1833. A Hebrew illuminated manuscript, a marriage contract or festival scroll, from the Braginsky Collection.
  17. - Poem on Plum. (1392–1910). hanging scroll; ink on paper. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1700s, 1800s. This is a reproduction of the object itself, not a modern photograph of a building.
  18. - Scrolling Floral Vines (verso). ). India, Lucknow, Mughal, 18th century. Gum tempera and gold on paper. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1755. This is a reproduction of the object itself, not a modern photograph of a building.
  19. - Assyrian wall relief showing a scribe and a horseman trampling enemies. From Anah, Iraq. Iraq Museum. A depiction or photograph of a scribe at work, copying text by hand.
  20. - Abram with book in hand, reading scroll (Magella) with phylacteries on forehead LOC matpc.19299. Title: Abram with book in hand, reading scroll (Magella) with phylacteries on forehead Abstract/medium: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection Physical description: 1 negative:
  21. - Abram (Yemenite Jew) with book in hand, reading scroll (Magella) with phylacteries on forehead LOC matpc.19300. Title: Abram [Yemenite Jew] with book in hand, reading scroll (Magella) with phylacteries on forehead Abstract/medium: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection Physical description: 1 negative:
  22. - An Egyptian Book of the Dead unrolled at the British Museum. Curators show a papyrus from the British Museum's Book of the Dead exhibition. These funerary rolls were made to order for individual owners from roughly 1550 BCE, with spells copied by scribes and blanks left for the buyer's name.
  23. - The longest Book of the Dead in the world. The British Museum on the Greenfield Papyrus, at some 37 metres the longest known Book of the Dead, made for the daughter of a high priest of Amun around 950 BCE.
  24. - The Great Isaiah Scroll. The Israel Museum on 1QIsaa, the largest and best-preserved of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran in 1947, a complete book of Isaiah roughly a thousand years older than any previously known Hebrew copy.
  25. - Writing cuneiform. Getty Museum demonstration of a stylus being pressed into wet clay, filmed for the Cyrus Cylinder exhibition.
  26. - Ola leaf manuscripts. A Sri Lankan cultural-fund film on ola (palm) leaf manuscripts and the surviving practitioners who make them.
  27. - A fragment of a clay tablet with a cuneiform inscription, unearthed September 2014 at Bakr Awa, Sulaymaniyah,. A fragment of a clay tablet with a cuneiform inscription, unearthed in September 2014 at the ancient mound of Bakr Awa, Shahrizor Plain, Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraq. The excavation was headed by Professor Peter Miglus of the Heidelberg University.
  28. - Handling East Asian hanging scrolls. Harvard preservation staff demonstrate the correct handling of the layered paper-and-silk scroll format.
  29. - Making a traditional Chinese hanging scroll. British Museum conservator Jin Xian Qiu, with 43 years at the craft, mounts a hanging scroll from start to finish.
  30. - Cuneiform inscriptions found on the lapis lazuli cylinder seal of Shagarakti-Shuriash were recorded on this cl. Cuneiform inscriptions found on the lapis lazuli cylinder seal of the Kassite king Shagarakti-Shuriash were recorded on this clay tablet from Nineveh, modern-day Iraq. Circa 689 BCE. Currently housed in the British Museum in London. Modern photograph of the subject as it appears today.
  31. - A stray Sumerian tablet. Cambridge University Library examines a tiny clay tablet from Zabala in southern Iraq, about 2200 BCE.
  32. - I am Ashurbanipal. British Museum trailer for its exhibition on the Assyrian king who built the Nineveh library.
  33. - The palace decoration of Ashurbanipal. British Museum on the Nineveh palace reliefs that surrounded the tablet collection.
  34. - Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Archaeology Studio on the excavation of the palace and its library of clay tablets.
  35. - Irving Finkel on cracking cuneiform. Royal Institution lecture by the British Museum's Irving Finkel on the world's first writing system, pressed into clay tablets in Mesopotamia.
  36. - Larry Hurtado on the scroll and the early codex. The late New Testament scholar explains why early Christians adopted the codex while the rest of the ancient world stayed with scrolls.
  37. - Egypt's last papyrus makers. Business Insider films the one Egyptian village still making papyrus by the 5,000-year-old method of soaking, layering and pressing reed pith.
  38. - Cuneiform: the earliest writing. World History Encyclopedia explainer on how Sumerian cuneiform developed from accounting tokens into a full script.
  39. - How cuneiform was deciphered. World of Antiquity traces the nineteenth-century decipherment of cuneiform, including the Behistun inscription.
  40. - The library of Ashurbanipal. History with Cy on how the Nineveh tablet collection was assembled and what survived its burning.
  41. - A Sinhalese palm-leaf manuscript from 1750. Museum curators handle a palm-leaf book from Sri Lanka: text incised with a stylus, ink rubbed in, leaves strung between wooden boards, the standard book form across South and Southeast Asia before paper.
  42. - Making amate bark paper. The Getty shows how Maya scribes made amate paper from fig bark, and how the craft continues in Mexico today.
  43. - Digitising Sinhalese palm-leaf manuscripts. The British Library images four Sinhalese palm-leaf manuscripts from the Hugh Nevill collection.
  44. - What is papyrus, and how is it made?. The Fitzwilliam Museum shows ancient Egyptian papyrus and demonstrates how the sheets were built up from strips of reed.
  45. - Why the codex replaced the scroll. Irish Dominicans on the shift from roll to folded, stitched pages, and what that format made possible.
  46. - What exactly was the Book of the Dead?. Egyptologist Dr Ilona Regulski explains that the Book of the Dead was never a fixed book but a menu of around 200 spells, selected and copied per customer, on rolls that could run tens of metres.
  47. - Twenty years to read the unreadable. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky on the long effort to read the Herculaneum scrolls without opening them.
  48. - Deciphering the scrolls of Herculaneum. 60 Minutes on the buried Roman library and the imaging effort to read its charred rolls.
  49. - How a palm-leaf manuscript is made. A demonstration of palm-leaf manuscript production, a technique with a documented history of over two thousand years in South and Southeast Asia.
  50. - Vesuvius Challenge: how the scrolls were read. The 2023 Grand Prize winners present their ink-detection and segmentation methods for virtually unrolling the carbonised Herculaneum papyri.
  51. - Papyrus, parchment and paper. American Bookbinders Museum compares the three great writing supports and what each made possible.
  52. - The Babylonian Map of the World. British Museum Curator's Corner: Irving Finkel reads a clay tablet carrying the oldest known map of the world.
  53. - Thailand's palm-leaf manuscript collection. UNESCO on the Phra That Phanom chronicle manuscripts and their preservation.
  54. - Reading the Library of Ashurbanipal. British Museum curator Dr Jon Taylor on the 7th-century BCE Assyrian king's collection of cuneiform tablets from Nineveh, around 30,000 fragments, the oldest surviving systematically assembled library, and the source of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
  55. - Writing palm-leaf manuscripts in Sri Lanka. A UNESCO documentation of the full Sri Lankan palm-leaf craft: cutting and curing leaves, incising text with a stylus, and inking.
  56. - Conservators Gwenanne Edwards and Claire Dekle work on Egyptian papyri fragments circa 7th-11th century CE, fr. Conservators Gwenanne Edwards and Claire Dekle work on Egyptian papyri fragments, c. 7th-11th century CE, from the African and MIddle Eastern Division's Fustat Collection, April 25, 2025. Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress. Note: Privacy and publicity rights for individuals depicted may apply. Modern photograph of the subject as it appears today.
  57. - AI decodes the Herculaneum scrolls. Computer History Museum panel on the machine-learning pipeline behind the Vesuvius Challenge.
  58. - Solving the mystery of the Bodleian's Herculaneum scroll. The Bodleian's carbonised scroll is imaged and read for the first time through the Vesuvius Challenge.
  59. - The Genji Monogatari Emaki: the oldest surviving Genji scroll. Smarthistory art historians examine the c.1130 illustrated Tale of Genji handscroll held at the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya, ink and colour on paper. It is the earliest surviving pictorial version of the novel, made roughly a century after the text was written.
  60. - The Epic of Atrahasis and the history of cuneiform. The Morgan Library presents a cuneiform tablet and the earliest forms of recorded text.
  61. - AI reads a sealed Roman scroll. A PBS segment on the first text recovered from inside an unopened Herculaneum scroll.
  62. - What the unrolled Vesuvius scroll actually means. An archaeologist assesses the first fully unrolled Herculaneum scroll and the wider set of imaging projects it belongs to.
  63. - A Herculaneum scroll, burned and saved. Greg Lanier walks through the background of the effort to decipher the Vesuvius-charred scrolls.
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