Papyrus: The Plant that Changed the World: From Ancient Egypt to Today's Water Wars
John Gaudet
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 1605988286
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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 Pharaohs to twenty-first 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 sixth 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.
managers that stands of both species be diversified with swamp plants that are more useful as waterfowl food, such as wild millet, smartweeds, rice cutgrass, and wild rice. Outside the delta, in oxidation ponds in the New Valley in the Toshka Project region, Prof. Safwat of the University of Minia is trying out cattail and reed grass species that will bear the brunt of highly saline and toxic wastewater in that region. Papyrus, on the other hand, although it does not do well in saline waters, is
WORKHORSE OF ANCIENT EGYPT 1. The 2007 web page from RopeCordNews (http://www.ropecord.com/new/dl/spring2007.pdf). 2. K. Borojevic and R. Mountain, “The Ropes of Pharaohs: The Source of Cordage from ‘Rope Cave’ at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis Revisited” (Journal of Archaeological Research in Egypt 47:131-141, 2012). 3. N. Lewis, Papyrus. 4. Ibid. 5. One famous temple drawing shows a young man stripping the skin from a fresh papyrus stem, perhaps, as suggested by Prof. Quirke, to use as a binder
Ecological degradation” (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/cvlw_env_sdn.html), 1994. 3. P. Howell, M. Lock, and S. Cobb, The Jonglei Canal, Impact and Opportunity (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988). 4. G. El-Qady, M. Metwaly, A. El-Galladi, and K. Ushijima, “Evaluation of Peat Using Geoelectrical Methods, Nile Delta, Egypt” (Memoirs of the Faculty of Engin., Kyushu Univ. 65:1-13), 2005. 5. EPA Water website, http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/people.cfm. 12: THE REVENGE OF THE SACRED
started up. Far from being a discreet opening of a remote hydropower project in an area normally ignored by the world press, the event was revealed as essentially the first shot fired in the Nile Water War and received worldwide coverage. As it happened, Peter Guber, author of a book on the power of purposeful storytelling, and Richard Bangs, author of The Lost River, a book about the Omo and Blue Nile rivers, and co-author of Mystery of the Nile, were with the group, who had between them
and while they dreamed, the lake dried. Popular thinking was that the multi-million-dollar market would change Kenya the way outsourcing has changed Asian countries. Environmentalists both locally and internationally were outraged at the impact that was evident from the start. Unfortunately, their recommendations had only a minor effect, and the government seemed powerless—or unwilling—to stop the onslaught. Perhaps this was because the people working on the farms, the owners and managers of the