Friday 20 January 2012

Papyrus roll 160 inches or 4 m long


Have you ever held a 160 inches or 4 m long papyrus roll in your hands? It is something very different to read and write about papyrus rolls and codices until you notice the difference in your own hands, sholders, and see it with your own eyes.
It is awesome to hold such a roll in your hands and not only imagine, but also try out what it is like to write on it, then to scroll backwards and forwards to read what you have written, how memorization of earlier passages has to work, how to find references, how to bookmark, where you have left a passage, where no pages are ... and then, hold a book in comparison.
Papyrus rolls have not only disadvantages - you see more at one go, your view is not limited to one page, so the horizon of the context to any given passage is larger, and you have to work your way through a text, as you cannot simply jump from one passage to another distant one. It is rather an organic reading, and the move to a codex can be compared to that between a book and the internet with hyperlinks. Suddenly, you can make connections which the roll does not provide. Instead, it gives progress and development of the content.

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