EDITORS: Images are available at: http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2005/Jul05/papyrus
Newswise — Do you have your pieces of wood, a couple of wax tablets and a wooden pen and clay inkpot? Across the country, families are getting youngsters ready for school by purchasing notebooks, paper, pencils and pens.
But nearly 2,000 years ago, children preparing for school were gathering slabs of wood, wax tablets, sheets of papyrus and ink.
The University of Michigan papyrus collection includes examples of wooden tablets used for writing exercises. These wooden tablets were ideal for school children, said Terry Szymanski, the collection's Web developer, because they were cheap and reusable. The ink used was water-based so it could be cleaned off to begin a new exercise.
"Wax tablets are unique among ancient writing materials because they, too, can be easily erased and reused," Szymanski said.
Though commonly used by schools in Greece, the wax tablets were also used for official documents such as birth certificates.
These wood and wax examples of early school supplies are just a sample of the ancient writing materials that can be found within the U-M collection. Papyrus, paper, parchment and shards of pottery known as ostraka are also in the collection, giving papyrologists and archaeologists clues to what life was like in ancient cultures.
The collection even has "mummy tags," a piece of wood with the name of the mummified person tied with a string around the neck of a mummy.
"These tags, which have been likened to modern toe tags and must have been essential for avoiding embarrassing mix-ups at the mummy morgue," Szymanski said.
Papyrus is the most common writing material in the U-M collection. While it was used for public documents, private letters and literary texts, it was expensive enough that in ancient Egypt it was often recycled and reused. The U-M collection contains Biblical fragments,
religious writings, public and private documents, private letters and astronomical, astrological, magical and mathematical texts. One of these mathematical texts is a lengthy table of fractions and a series of practical problems in arithmetic---the dreaded story problem.
To learn more about papyrology and ancient writing materials, visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/k12/materials/materials.html. The site features examples of various materials and their uses and contains a tutorial on making papyrus. There also are stories about how the papyrus and other artifacts were found, how they came to U-M, how they are preserved and how students and scholars use them.
U-M papyrology: http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/Papyrus for grades K-12: http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/k12/materials/materials.html
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