Throughout history, mankind has committed its greatest thoughts to writing. The power of the written word is vast: it allows ideas, emotions, even passions, to transcend time, to pass unaltered from one person to another, from one generation to the next. Human society itself is erected on a solid foundation of documents: edicts, declarations, holy books. The reed paper, papyrus, was made for thousands of years in Egypt, from the time of the pharaohs, through the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, and on into the Islamic era. To hold this manuscript today, to decipher its message, is to communicate directly with a vanished world.