Papyrus Manufacture Once Again a Monopoly in Egypt

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Hassan el Sayyid Ragab, an electrical engineer and former diplomat, is one of the world’s more exotic entrepreneurs. His factory is a houseboat on the Nile in the shadow of the Cairo Sheraton Hotel.

On board the houseboat stands a row of bathtubs full of water with soggy strips of material floating on the surface. At a table, workers sit making a lattice out of the wet strips, like pastry cooks concocting some delicate creation. Other workers man a hand press, bearing down on the screw and gradually squeezing the lattice strips ever tighter.

With this organization Mr. Ragab has built up a monopoly as complete as any businessman could ever achieve. He has virtually cornered the market on papyrus.

Papyrus was the writing paper of ancient Egypt, which also found its way to ancient Greece and Rome. Many of the techniques for making the paper out of the Cyperus papyrus plant had been lost for centuries before Mr. Ragab came along. Now he proudly claims, “My paper is in the Louvre in Paris and you will also find it at the Papyrologists’ Society in Brussels.” In fact, wherever you find papyrus these days, likely you will find Mr. Ragab’s product.

Not that the world is rushing to his gangplank. Most of his customers are scholars who prefer to make reproductions of tomb paintings on heavy papyrus paper rather than on paper made from wood pulp. Paint and ink are enhanced by the fine surface, making it an ideal paper for art work. Some papyrus ends up in the hands of tourists in the form of $150 paintings of the pyramids, which Mr. Ragab can arrange on request.

The monopoly has hardly made a tycoon out of Mr. Ragab. Each standard-size, 12-by-16-inch sheet of papyrus costs him $15 to make and sells for about $20. After more than 12 years in business Mr. Ragab is just beginning to show a profit. He has invested about $25,000 in his houseboat factory (which he rather grandly calls the Papyrus Institute) and he says that “only now does it seem as if we might get our money back.”

Mr. Ragab first became interested in papermaking several years ago when he was Egypt’s ambassador to Peking. Because of his engineering background he was asked by Cairo to prepare a report on Chinese paper-mill technology. Mr. Ragab 032didn’t care much for the paper mills, but he was impressed by the Chinese system of cottage industries and suggested that Cairo develop a similar system for papermaking.

But the only type of paper that seemed to fit into a backyard operation was papyrus. And no one knew how to make that. Not surprisingly, the government declined to finance such a project. So in 1962 Mr. Ragab, whose curiosity was thoroughly aroused, started his own company and began doing some detective work.

For a start he found that the Cyperus papyrus plant no longer grows in Egypt. The plant, which looks like green bamboo with tassles on top, once grew in profusion in the shallow, muddy water along the banks of the Nile. The thick stands of the plant (some as tall as 25 feet) were a familiar sight in Biblical times and were almost certainly the bulrushes in which the infant Moses was found.

The ancient Egyptians didn’t use it just for paper. They used the wood from the root for fuel and for carving utensils. From the stem came cloth and cord and, bound together, even boats. The pith was eaten raw or cooked.

Over the centuries the land along the Nile has been cleared for agriculture and the papyrus has disappeared. Only in the remote reaches of the Upper Nile in countries such as the Sudan and Uganda can the papyrus plant still be found in abundance.

Mr. Ragab first attempted to grow papyrus along the Nile with seeds from the Sudan, but they refused to grow. Finally he had to import papyrus roots and grow his plants from these. Now he has 10 flourishing acres of papyrus.

From the start Mr. Ragab wanted to make his paper the ancient Egyptian way. But the process had been lost to antiquity. There are some descriptions of the process, the best being that of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. But he’s somewhat vague and even suggests that the strips of papyrus were pasted together.

The only remaining maker of papyrus paper is an Italian family that has been turning out a few sheets for generations, mainly for use by the Vatican for its official decrees. But the Italians use a more modern process.

To track down the mechanics of this ancient industry Mr. Ragab became historian and archaeologist. He talked to experts, studied ancient tomb paintings and examined the texture of papyrus taken from Egyptian tombs. The product that has emerged from his efforts is, he believes, very similar to the paper used by the pharaohs.

Mr. Ragab harvests his papyrus in the summer and strips off the green outer surface (it peels off in fibers rather like celery). Then, with a hand-operated slicing machine the papyrus is cut into strips about one-twelfth of an inch thick, which will ultimately produce paper only a tenth as thick.

The ancient Egyptians first soaked the long strips of the plant in the Nile. Mr. Ragab prefers to use bathtubs filled with Nile water. This soaking, it’s believed, releases a sugary substance that acts as a glue when it hardens.

The soggy strips are then cut to the appropriate length and placed on felt, each piece parallel with a slight overlap. The second layer is placed on top of the first at right angles. This lattice is then covered with felt and put in a screw press. The pressure squeezes out the water and glues the pieces together. The whole process takes two weeks and produces a paper a little heavier than bond paper and with a stiffer feel. There’s no color uniformity, and sheets range from pure white to a tawny shade.

In using the cutting device, which he invented himself (the ancients probably used something like a machete), and the screw process, Mr. Ragab is, of course, deferring to modern technology. The ancient Egyptians dried out the lattice of strips on the banks of the Nile and hammered them flat. Any rough spots were then polished with ivory or shell. Mr. Ragab could have modernized his papermaking even more, but he explains, “I’m afraid that would make this operation too commercial. It would destroy its character as a small cottage industry.”

Curiously enough, Mr. Ragab has done more than revive a technology. He has also revived a monopoly. The pharaohs once controlled the world’s papermaking industry, and papyrus was ancient Egypt’s most important export.

The bubble burst when methods were developed to turn animal skins into vellum, or parchment, and when ways were found to turn bark and straw into pulp for paper. The papyrus-paper industry staggered along for a few hundred years and finally expired, in about the ninth century A.D.

Hassan el Sayyid Ragab, an electrical engineer and former diplomat, is one of the world’s more exotic entrepreneurs. His factory is a houseboat on the Nile in the shadow of the Cairo Sheraton Hotel.