History of Text Technologies

The Papyrus Fragments Collection consists of twenty-six fragments of papyrus with Ancient Greek text. Sixteen fragments are known to be orders to bankers to pay out various sums. Some fragments are too small to make sense of, but all seem to be orders to a banker to pay a sum to a third person. This makes them essentially an early form of checks or banknotes. Some of the papyri are cut from larger pieces that were previously written on. Some have writing on the back, but none of these back writings date later than the main writing, and none are in good enough condition to read. A note with the texts stated that they came from mummy cartonnage (plastered layers of papyrus) found at Abusir el-Melek.

The palm leaf book is a manuscript with text written in an unidentified South Asian script. Its provenance is unknown. Two holes are drilled in the center for rope, which hold multiple leaves together.

This is a facsimile of the Paris Codex, one of four surviving pre-Columbian Maya books. The codex is accordion folded and consists of amate bark paper.

This is a facsimile of the Madrid Codex, the longest of the surviving Maya codices. The Codex was made from a long strip of amate paper that was folded up accordion-style. The paper was then coated with a thin layer of fine stucco, which was used as the painting surface.

This book is a collection of paper samples handmade from different plant fibers, with each different fiber accompanied by a few paragraphs describing the plant it came from and the author's paper-making process for that plant.