§394. Manufacture of Paper.--The papyrus reed had a jointed stem, triangular in shape, and reached a maximum height of perhaps fourteen feet with a thickness of four or five inches. The stem contained a pith of which the paper was made by a process substantially as follows: The stem was cut through at the joints, the hard rind removed, and the pith cut into thin sections or strips as evenly as possible. The first cut seems to have been made from one of the angles to the middle of the opposite side, and the others parallel with it to the right and left. The strips were then assorted according to width, and enough of them were arranged side by side as closely as possible upon a board to make their combined width almost equal to the length of the single strip. Across these was laid another layer at right angles, with perhaps a coating of glue or paste between them. The mat-like sheet that resulted was then soaked in water and pressed or hammered into a substance not unlike our paper, called by the Romans _charta_. After the sheets (_schedae_) had been dried and bleached in the sun, they were rid by scraping of rough places and trimmed into uniform sizes, depending upon the length of the strips of pith. The fewer the strips that composed each sheet, or in other words the greater the width of each strip, the closer the texture of the _charta_ and the better its quality. It was possible, therefore, to grade the paper by its size, and the width of the sheet rather than its height was taken as the standard. The best quality seems to have been sold in sheets about ten inches wide, the poorest that could be used to write upon, about six. The height in each case was perhaps one inch to two inches greater. It has been calculated that a single papyrus plant would make about twenty sheets of the size proportioned to its height, and this number seems to have been made the commercial unit of measure (_scapus_), by which the paper was sold in the market, a unit corresponding roughly to our quire.
[Illustration: FIGURE 189. INSTRUMENTS USED IN WRITING]
§395. Pens and Ink.--Only the upper surface of the sheet was commonly written upon, the one formed by the horizontal layer of strips, and these showing even after the process of manufacture served to guide the pen of the writer. In the case of books where it was important to keep the number of lines constant to the page, they were ruled with a circular piece of lead. The pen (_calamus_) was made of a reed brought to a point and cleft much as our quill pens are. For the black ink (_atramentum_, §391) was occasionally substituted the liquid of the cuttlefish. Red ink was much used for headings, ornaments, and the like, and in pictures the inkstand is generally represented with two compartments (Fig. 189). The ink was more like paint than modern ink, and could be wiped off when fresh with a damp sponge and washed off even when it had become dry and hard. To wash sheets in order to use them a second time was a mark of poverty or niggardliness, but the reverse side of _schedae_ that had served their purpose was often used for scratch paper, especially in the schools (§110).