Ancient Egypt Study: How to Make a Papyrus

Oh this one is an exciting activity for Mavi!  He could not believe that he actually made paper!  Presenting to you how we made Papyrus out of our parchment paper.  This is in line with our Ancient Egypt Study (The Study of Ancient Egypt).

Materials needed:

• Glue mixture. (mix 1 cup of flour with 2 cups of water)
• strips of parchment paper.  You can use anything you like here, but I decided to use parchment paper to make it more realistic
• Aluminium foil
• kitchen towel
• rolling pin

This was our setup. I covered the area where we’re going to work so it won’t stick in the wooden table.


Next, let your kid/s dip the strips of parchment paper into the glue mixture and lay it out horizontally. Do this one by one.


We laid it out horizontally first, and then the second batch is in vertical position.  This will give the papyrus a weaving effect. Though we all know that in reality, papyrus was formed by laying out the strips in horizontal position only (stripes!).

    

Cover the paper with an Aluminium foil and roll a pin to flatten your work. We don’t have a rolling pin at home so we used the cling film roll.  Wipe out the excess mixture.


After which, dry them overnight. The wet strips are still delicate so I suggest NOT to remove them from your parchment cover. You can easily remove them later on when they’re dry.

And tada!!! This is our papyrus! Ready for us! Mavi suggested that we make more later after school :)


Hope you find this post helpful! Enjoy making your own! And don’t forget to use any kind of paper you want. I saw some using brown paper as well. That’s cool too!