Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/38

 There was a water plant growing in Egypt that looked like the bulrush in our own swamps, only it was much larger and taller. People found that if they cut this plant in thin strips, laid these strips close together, placed another layer crosswise over the first one, pressed these all down, and then allowed them to dry, they would have something on which they could write. This substance looked like our coarse brown paper. The water plant was the papyrus reed, and so the substance was called papyrus, and this is the word from which our word “paper” comes.

The papyrus was made in long strips, often about ten inches wide. On these strips the Egyptians wrote their books. They then rolled up the papyrus as we roll up a strip of wall paper. This is the reason that we speak of papyrus rolls instead of papyrus books. When you speak of the attendance roll at school you are simply using this ancient name,

Ahmes asked his father for a piece of papyrus and a brush and some black ink, and with these he went to the temple gate the next morning. The priest then showed Ahmes how to write numbers, and said to