Ancient Egypt
Elements of its Cultural History

  by Sjef Willockx

  
 


6. The papyrus plant

Here is a close-up of the "mop-like head":

© University of Cambridge

The Egyptian artists did a good job, transforming this into their stylized representation.

In the hieroglyphic script, the words for papyrus and green were identical (wAD). For us, this association of “green” with “papyrus” is not so obvious, as we tend to associate the word papyrus primarily with the writing material, and hence with its color of a yellowish brown: the color of dried autumn leaves. The living plant however has an intense green color.
Surrounded as Egypt was by endless deserts, the phenomenon of dense, lush vegetation, with a green so bright that it almost hurts the eye,  must have been a never ending wonder. And to the Egyptians, papyrus epitomized that wonder. It made papyrus a compelling symbol for vegetative power. The papyrus scepters that goddesses so often carry may well point to a relation with the powers of fecundity in nature.
The same word wAD can, as an adjective, mean “hale, sturdy”, or “fortunate, happy”. As a verb it means “to flourish”, or “to be successful”.
So when in the New Kingdom the making of faience amulets became the world’s first mass producing industry, amulets in the form of a miniature papyrus column were naturally among the favorites.

© University of Hawaii

The Egyptians not only valued the papyrus plant to the point of revering it, but also the papyrus habitat par excellence: the papyrus marshes. Two cases should be mentioned in particular. The first is that of Hathor, emerging from a papyrus thicket. This is a frequently recurring theme in the Book of the Dead: in the vignette to Spell 186 (often the last spell of a manuscript), we see Hathor as a cow, descending from the mountainous desert, popping her head through the stems of a papyrus bush. This picture no doubt owed its popularity to its high content density: the desert being the goddess’s home as necropolis deity, while the papyrus thicket of the Delta was her natural habitat as a cow.

Another recurring theme is that of Horus in the papyrus fields. In the Osiris myth, Isis gives birth to Horus in the Delta region, where she has taken refuge to hide herself and her child from Seth and his allies. Protected by the green vegetation, he is safe from his uncle - who himself is a man of the dry lands of the desert.
This tale strongly reinforced papyrus’s position as a protective symbol.

 

 

 

The god Horus in the papyrus fields. From Lepsius: “Denkmäler” ©  Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt.

The next photograph actually shows papyrus along the Nile - albeit more than 2,000 Km south of modern Egypt.

Papyrus in the wild, along the banks of the Nile in Uganda (Wikipedia).
Photograph by Michael Shade, released to the public domain.

And even this is not a papyrus marsh. There may be none of those left in the world today.

 

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