The author cannot watch without agitation at this plant with its' long naked stems, which are topped with dense knots of thin leaves.
This plant takes the author's thoughts not only into distant lands, but also into the most distant times.
For us, in St. Petersburg, in the Hermitage museum, pieces of brown scrolls with strange letters, reminiscent of pictures, are carefully kept.
They were found in Egypt in most ancient tombs of pharaohs and noblemen. In the coffins - the sarcophaguses - scrolls of strange "paper", tied with cords, are always found. Many of those scrolls, some of which are up to 40 m long and 1 m wide, have laid for over 5000 years.
Who wrote those strange letters on the long scrolls?
At that time, the scribes were the writers, and they were highly respected.
Via yellow crisp scrolls, through the millennia, we received beautiful hymns, dedicated to the sun, as well as scary fairy tales and stories.
These scrolls also preserved a message from a teacher to a student: "And a hawk must be taught to make a nest, and a falcon must learn how to fly! I will make a man out of you, you lousy boy, so know it".
The Egyptian scrolls with letters are called papyrus
In translation from the Egyptian language, "papyrus" means "gift of the river".
Papyrus is a plant that grew even in ancient times on the swampy shores of the Nile.
It was grown as a domestic plant near Memphis, Thebes, and the other cities.
Now the papyrus is found only in the highlands of Nile, at the Chad Lake and in the basins of Niger and Congo, i.e. in the African tropics.
In places where the papyrus grows, the shores of rivers from dark-green walls up to 3 and even 5 m tall, which stretch without breaking.
The green wall consists from straight three-sided stems as thick as an arm. The top of such a stem has a dense knot or an umbrella of long and narrow leaves.
Sometimes, among the green umbrellas of leaves, you find a stem with a taller umbrella of blooms in the shape of a grey-colored fan, which consists of complex spikelets, where scales cover the flowers.
The flowers with three stamens, with one three-parted pestle, resemble the flowers of a widespread plant of our swamps - the carex, which also has a three-sided stem.
Apparently, the papyrus and the carex come from the same family - the Cyperaceae.
The fruits of the papyrus are just like the fruits of the cereals - grains.
The roots of the papyrus are interesting, as they partially float in the water, forming an underwater quivering forest of white stems. Some roots and a thick woody rhizostome fasten into the swampy shores, securing them, and helping silt to accumulate.
The roots of papyrus, tasting like almonds, are fragrant and nutritious. The Egyptians ate them raw and roasted. These roots are the main food of hippos, which, with the disappearance of papyrus in the lowlands of the Nile, have migrated into its' highlands.
The three-sided papyrus stems, being those of an aquatic and swamp plant, have air-bearing vessels and large between-cell spaces, filled with air. They are light and do not sink in the water.
In ancient times, papyrus stems were tied together and made into two-person boats to catch fish and birds. Bigger vessels were lined with them on the inside. The stems were also woven into rugs, baskets. The bark was made into sandals, and the threads were made into cloths, which were more valued than the linen ones.
The most important - the papyrus plant was made into a sort of paper called the papyrus.
The cut-down papyrus stems had their heartwood removed and cut into long thin strips. These strips were put into a tight line onto a smooth board and moistened with water. The first row had a second put onto, but now the strips laid across the first row. They were scraped, smoothed, pressed and dried under the sun. The resulted strip had other strips glued onto. For the ink to last better, the papyrus was dumped into the wallpaper paste and died again.
Resulting from this labour was a firm, slightly yellowish papyrus, which, for many centuries, substituted paper, and preserved, in mysterious letters, the thoughts and feelings of people that lived long ago in Egypt, Palestine, Greece and Rome.
For us, who live in a northern city in the XX century, the Ancient Egypt does not appear to be so ancient. On the Neva's shores, "we got sphinxes under the snow". The preserved scrolls of ancient papyrus are carefully preserved in the Hermitage. On our winds is the live papyrus from the Nile shores.