Making Papyrus Paper

What a tedious job this would have been in Ancient Egyptian times! If I would have had to rely on this procedure in order to be able to write, I wouldn't have done any writing.

{You were supposed to use green paper and a light green paper, but we used green and yellow because that's all we had.}

First you draw a line about 1/2 " down from the top on the long end of one of the pieces of paper and the short end of the other one.

Then you cut about 1/2" strips all the way across up to the line.

Then you weaved both of the pieces together. This took forever.

Dawson thought he was a genius and had come up with a way to lay them out so he didn't have to actually weave. But then he turned it over ... ha, ha, ha!!!

He had trouble doing this. He did it for a while and then I finished it for him while he ate his lunch.

When it was completely weaved it was dipped into 1 part Elmer's glue and 4 parts water mixed together.

It was laid on a paper towel and patted dry.

Then it was laid out in the sun until it dried.

Then it was "papyrus paper". {Actually it was two pieces of construction paper weaved together and bonded with some glue water.}

The real lesson learned from this project was that even the smallest tasks of writing required very difficult work and it could not have been easy to live in Ancient Egyptian times.