The ' far-away light ' () is a reference to St Elmo's Fire, an electrical discharge supposed by ancient Greek mariners to be an epiphany of the Dioscuri, but the meaning of the line was obscured by gaps in the papyrus until reconstructed by a modern scholar — such reconstructions are typical of the extant poetry ( see Scholars, fragments and sources below ).

In the swamp regions of north-east Africa papyrus and associated plants, including the soft-wooded ambach, flourish in immense quantities, and little else is found in the way of vegetation.

The Heroninos Archive is the name given to a huge collection of papyrus documents, mostly letters, but also including a fair number of accounts, which come from Roman Egypt in 3rd century AD.

His famous example of this is using ancient Egypt and looking at the ways they built themselves out of media with very different properties stone and papyrus.

In fact, any combination of codices and scrolls on the one hand with papyrus and parchment on the other is technically feasible and well attested from the historical record.

Skeat “… in at least three cases and probably in all, in the form of codices " and he theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and then “… must have spread rapidly to the Near East …” In his discussion of one of the earliest pagan parchment codices to survive from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, Eric Turner seems to challenge Skeat ’ s notion when stating “… its mere existence is evidence that this book form had a prehistory ” and that “ early experiments with this book form may well have taken place outside of Egypt .” Early codices of parchment or papyrus appear to have been widely used as personal notebooks, for instance in recording copies of letters sent ( Cicero Fam.

As far back as the early 2nd century, there is evidence that the codex — usually of papyrus — was the preferred format among Christians: in the library of the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum ( buried in AD 79 ), all the texts ( Greek literature ) are scrolls ( see Herculaneum papyri ); in the Nag Hammadi " library ", secreted about AD 390, all the texts ( Gnostic Christian ) are codices.

There is reference on a Greek papyrus from 163 BCE to the procedure being conducted on girls in Memphis, the ancient Egyptian capital, and Strabo ( c. 64 BCE – c. 23 CE ), the Greek geographer, reported it when he visited Egypt in 25 BCE.

Problem 50 of the Ahmes papyrus uses these methods to calculate the area of a circle, according to a rule that the area is equal to the square of 8 / 9 of the circle's diameter.

Probably the earliest surviving New Testament manuscript, Rylands Library Papyrus P52 is a Greek papyrus fragment discovered in Egypt in 1920 ( now at the John Rylands Library, Manchester ).

Conversely, the Ebers papyrus ( c. 1550 BC ) is full of incantations and foul applications meant to turn away disease-causing demons, and other superstition.

Others show him as a sage who is seated on a chair with a roll of papyrus on his knees or under his arm.

' He is represented seated with a papyrus scroll across his knees, wearing a skullcap and a long linen kilt.

* 1962 – The Derveni papyrus, Europe's oldest surviving manuscript dating to 340 BC, is found in northern Greece.

This detail is informed by the fact that Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West, and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books.

Papyrus scrolls comprised the collection, and although codices were used after 300 BC, the Alexandrian Library is never documented as having switched to parchment, perhaps because of its strong links to the papyrus trade.

Parchment, or vellum as the best type of parchment is known had also replaced papyrus, which was not nearly so long lived and has survived to the present only in the extremely dry conditions of Egypt, although it was widely used across the Roman world.

Nag Hammadi is best known for being the site where local farmers found a sealed earthenware jar containing thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices, together with pages torn from another book, in December 1945.

The oldest surviving epic poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer ( in Mesopotamia, now Iraq ), which was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus.

The removal ( or " sealing up ") of the leaven is referred to in the Elephantine papyri, an Aramaic papyrus from 5th century BCE Elephantine in Egypt.

Because parchment, prepared from animal hides, is far more durable than paper or papyrus, most palimpsests known to modern scholars are parchment, which rose in popularity in western Europe after the 6th century.

Parchment was developed in Pergamon, from which name it is believed the word " parchment " evolved, under the patronage of either Eumenes I, who ruled 263 – 241 BCE ; or Eumenes II, who ruled 197 – 158 ), as a substitute for papyrus, which was temporarily not being exported from Alexandria, its only source.

Papyrus () is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt.

Chemically, papyrus is composed of 57 % cellulose, 27 % lignin, 9 % minerals, and 7 % water.

Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in possession of the University of Milan ( renumbered 46 ).

It is now known, through a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus listing the earliest chief librarians of the Library of Alexandra ( P. Oxy.

Cyperus papyrus is now used mainly for decoration, as it is nearly extinct in its native habitat in the Nile Delta, where in ancient times it was widely cultivated.

Thanks to the discovery of papyrus trial transcripts ( dated to Ramesses III ), it is now known that there was a plot against his life as a result of a royal harem conspiracy during a celebration at Medinet Habu.

Modern research suggests that the papyrus dates to the much later 13th dynasty, with part of the papyrus now thought to date to the time of Pharaoh Khety, and the admonitions of Ipuwer actually being addressed to the god Atum, not a mortal king.

The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is a hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio ( Egyptian Museum ) at Turin.

The Egerton Gospel ( British Library Egerton Papyrus 2 ) refers to a group of papyrus fragments of a codex of a previously unknown gospel, found in Egypt and sold to the British Museum in 1934 ; the physical fragments are now dated to the very end of the 2nd century AD, although the date of composition is less clear – perhaps 50-100 AD.

* Lloyd-Jones, H. ( 1957 ) " Appendix " to the reprint of Smyth ( 1926 ), including text and translation of most papyrus fragments ; now largely superseded by Sommerstein ( 2009 ).

* The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus ( RMP ) dates from the Second Intermediate Period ( circa 1650 BC ), but its author, Ahmes, identifies it as a copy of a now lost Middle Kingdom papyrus.

She was buried at Bab el-Gasus, her coffins and papyrus are now in Cairo.

The papyrus is now on display under low-light conditions in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.

In 1903 a fragment of a third-century papyrus scroll that had been used for an official register was discovered ( Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 654, now British Museum Papyrus 1531 verso ) with further sayings.

Modern research suggests that the papyrus dates to the much later 13th dynasty, with part of the papyrus now thought to date to the time of Pharaoh Khety, and the admonitions of Ipuwer actually being addressed to the god Atum, not a mortal king.

London papyrus No. 131, now in the British Museum.

The very archaic pyramid texts, as well as the now lost Scorpion papyrus enabled him to sketch the grammar of the earliest known form of Egyptian ( Zeitschrift d. Deutsch.

Moreover, the evidence from the papyrus document is now obviated by the fact that the document has been securely dated to Year 19 of Senusret III and Year 1 of Amenemhet III.

In the Egyptian town Oxyrhynchus, a similar summary of books 37-40 and 48-55 was found on a roll of papyrus that is now in the British Museum.

It is drawn on a papyrus reportedly discovered at Deir el-Medina in Thebes, collected by Bernardino Drovetti ( known as Napoleon's Proconsul ) in Egypt sometime before 1824 AD and now preserved in Turin's Museo Egizio.

One on papyrus ( now located at the Egyptian Museum in Turin ) provides a detailed depiction of the tomb at 1: 28 scale.

In 1928, a papyrus ( PSI 1090 ) was found that contained 54 fragmentary lines by the poet, in six pieces now located in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.