Papyrus: The Plant that Changed the World: From Ancient Egypt to Today's Water Wars

by John Gaudet

Overview

At the center of the most vital human-plant relationship in history, Papyrus evokes the mysteries of the ancient world while holding the key to the world’s wetlands and atmospheric stability.

From ancient Pharos to 21st Century water wars, papyrus is a unique plant that is still one of the fastest growing plant species on earth.
It produces its own “soil”—a peaty, matrix that floats on water—and its stems inspired the fluted columns of the ancient Greeks. In ancient Egypt, the papyrus bounty from the Nile delta provided not just paper for record keeping—instrumental to the development of civilization—but food, fuel and boats. Disastrous weather in the 6th Century caused famines and plagues that almost wiped out civilization in the west, but it was papyrus paper in scrolls and codices that kept the record of our early days and allowed the thread of history to remain unbroken. The sworn enemy of oblivion and the guardian of our immortality it came to our rescue then and will again.

Today, it is not just a curious relic of our ancient past,
but a rescuing force for modern ecological and societal blight. In an ironic twist, Egypt is faced with enormous pollution loads that forces them to import food supplies, and yet papyrus is one of the most effective and efficient natural pollution filters known to man. Papyrus was the key in stemming the devastation to the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River from raging peat fires (that last for years), heavy metal pollution in the Zambezi River Copperbelt and the papyrus laden shores of Lake Victoria—which provides water to more than 30
million people—will be crucial as the global drying of the climate continues. 8
page insert, illustrations throughout.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605985664
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	06/15/2014
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

John Gaudet, a professional ecologist has worked with the
U.S. government and carried out research under grants from the National
Geographic Society. As an ecologist and primary environmental advisor he is now a writer and consultant. His work has appeared in the Washington Post and he remains active in African, agricultural, and conservation/environmental agencies. John lives in northern Virginia. Visit his website at http://www.fieldofreeds.com.

Table of Contents

Prologue Ancient Egypt and Papyrus, the Eternal Marriage xiii

Part I Ancient Heritage 1

1 First Encounter 3

2 Nature's Bounty 10

3 Papyrus Boats, the Pride of Ancient Egypt 27

4 Rope, the Workhorse of Ancient Egypt 38

5 Papyrus Paper, in All the Offices of the World 44

Part II When Swamps Are. More than Just Wet Places 57

6 The Floating World 59

7 The Other Marsh Men, an African Perspective 75

8 Sacred Swamps and Temples of Immortality 80

9 The Field of Reeds as a Way of Life 95

10 Swamps Are the Future 101

11 Sarah Starts a. War 113

12 The Revenge of the, Sacred, Sedge 125

Part III Papyrus Swamps, the Last Frontier 137

13 The Congo, Economic Miracle or Pit of Despair 139

14 A Tragic Irony 148

15 The Battle for Lake Victoria 157

16 War Along the Nile 169

17 It Takes an Army to Save the Sudd 179

18 Blood Roses, Papyrus, and the Mew Scramble for Africa 190

19 The Zambezi, the Victorians, and Papyrus 212

20 An Unwanted Legacy 218

21 The Okavango, Miracle of the Kalahari 230

22 Papyrus Blooms Again in the Holy Land 240

23 The Rift Valley, a Safe Haven for Birds 251

24 The Egyptian Solution 258

25 2050, The New Delta 266

26 Conclusion 268

Further Reading 273

Acknowledgments 285

Endnotes 287

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

04/21/2014
Well-known as a writing material in ancient Egypt, papyrus had many more uses, according to ecologist Gaudet in this encyclopedic history of the swamp-dwelling plant. Indeed, Gaudet maintains that Egyptian civilization, even before writing emerged, might not have developed without this extraordinary productive plant: the ancients used it for homes, boats, rope, baskets, fuel, and even food; it grows so densely over water that small villages were built on it. Papyrus motifs adorned their paintings, temples and tombs, amulets, and jewelry. Gaudet delivers an exhaustive description of the ancient technical processes that turned stems and rhizomes into daily necessities. Today, however, paper, wood, plastic, and cloth have replaced papyrus, and the swamps in which it grows are being drained worldwide. This process has had disastrous ecological results, as the plant acts as a filter to stop soil erosion, safeguard ground water, and support fish, birds, mammals, and, ultimately, man. The book’s second half focuses on efforts to reverse this massive ecological damage by restoring papyrus swamps. Successes are dramatic but limited, and as with many accounts of environmental destruction, readers may struggle to share the writer’s optimism. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Bravo! Not only does Papyrus tell you everything about papyrus, it is a great read. The section on how to build a papyrus boat is hard to put down! The explanation of just how crucial papyrus was to ancient Egypt's development is masterfully and convincingly told. I love the illustrations. They explained tomb painting I have been looking at for 40 years in ways I never imagined.”

Bob Brier

A fascinating account of the plant that provided the world with paper for the first four thousand years of its history. I learned a lot from this book, not only about papyrus but also about how wetlands can serve as filters for waste-water and how marshes and tropical swamps can help conserve valuable water. Lively and well written.

Jean-Daniel Stanley

A versatile plant that has played a huge ecological and economic role, papyrus is brought into focus by John Gaudet in this outstanding book – a fascinating read, an enlightening story.

-Peter H. Raven

This fascinating and beautifully written book is an absolute eye opener into the extraordinary world of papyrus. John Gaudet has a remarkable story to tell, and he tells it extremely well. This is a wonderful, enlightening book with an important message for those concerned with the fragile ecology of our world.

Alexander McCall Smith

A versatile plant that has played a huge ecological and economic role, papyrus is brought into focus by John Gaudet in this outstanding book – a fascinating read, an enlightening story.

Peter H. Raven

05/15/2014
After arguing that papyrus was the cornerstone of Ancient Egypt's tremendous, long-running success owing to its versatility as both crop and habitat, trained ecologist Gaudet (The Iron Snake) proposes that the world learns from this and employs papyrus swamps to solve modern crises of pollution, subsidence, water scarcity, and flagging economies in several African nations. While the author's history moves too fleetingly and gets jumbled, the underlying idea of the value of papyrus to Egyptian culture, politics, and economy is astute. Further, the lack of an obvious thesis leaves the reader lost at first. This changes when Gaudet transitions to wetland conservation—the benefits of swamps as filters for water rejuvenation, creation of habitats for endangered fauna and flora, and papyrus's rare advantages in these areas (its metabolism makes it extremely productive). If the reader is patient, the full force of the argument will be apparent by the end. VERDICT This will not really appeal to readers of Ancient Egypt, but it will have value to those interested in water ecology, wetlands management, and the green movement.—Evan M. Anderson, Kirkendall P.L., Ankeny, IA

Library Journal

2014-04-08
The hardy reed that stood at the center of ancient Egyptian civilization can foster sustainable growth in the 21st century, asserts ecologist Gaudet (Island of Pigs, 2011, etc.).The papyrus serves as a focus for the author's broad exploration of the vital role that wetlands (including papyrus swamps) play in preserving and replenishing the global environment. Indeed, the plant's history is not especially well-conveyed in the book's scattershot opening chapters, which confusingly mix a history of papyrus use and mythology in ancient Egypt with tales of 19th- and 20th-century European explorers in Africa, plus such present-day swamp-dwellers as Louisiana's Cajuns. None of it serves any clear purpose, but in the much better chapters that follow, Gaudet hits his stride, chronicling decades of misguided dam-building and swamp-draining that, combined with accelerating urbanization, have created horrific pollution problems and water shortages across Africa and the Middle East. Gaudet is not a doomsayer, however; he points to such hopeful signs for the future as Israel's Huleh Nature Reserve, which partially restored a wetland area shortsightedly drained in the 1950s, bringing many wild birds (and tourists) back to the area. Other positive developments include regional cooperation on the Transaqua Project, intended to revive the dying wetlands of Lake Chad, and the Nile Basin Initiative, to protect the water resources of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. Papyrus plays an important role since papyrus swamps can inexpensively filter polluted water and slow water loss from evaporation. Yet many obstacles remain—e.g., witness the 22-year civil war that erupted in part over a bypass canal that would have drained the Sudd, a vast complex of wetlands that nourishes rural South Sudan, to line the pockets of North Sudanese businessmen and provide more water for urbanized Egypt, which killed off its own papyrus swamps a millennium ago.The challenges are daunting, but Gaudet's detailed, undogmatic account of multiple attempts to counter overdevelopment with better practices inspires cautious optimism.

Kirkus Reviews

One of the ways that papyrus changed the world was by providing the model, both structural and spatial, for the first temple complexes. The history of western architecture begins with the papyrus plant. John Gaudet tells a fascinating tale of the transmutation of vegetable into mineral, of graceful stems and umbels into the first stone columns, and of gladed swamps into sacred precincts. Architects and architectural historians should read this book and learn more about the beautiful and useful plant that inspired the earliest works of monumental architecture.

Colin Davies