Papyrus, Stone, or Clay?:Recreating an ancient Greek artifact

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this civilizations class, it’s that it’s all about the process. And as for our ancient artifacts we had to recreate, it was no different. In my group of ancient Greece, we began brainstorming different ideas for the medium we could use. Papyrus was first proposed. Interestingly enough, the word "paper" is etymologically derived from papyros, Ancient Greek for the Cyperus papyrus plant.

blank papyrus
 (notice the grains from the reeds)

In classical Greece, papyrus, as imported from Egypt, was used on a scroll with the ends attached to two wooden rods. We first considered making papyrus, but that was quickly outvoted because the process takes at least a week for the reeds to set in and ferment. After that, we did what anyone would do looking for blank papyrus scrolls—we googled it. This all happened in class on Tuesday and little did we realize that papyrus takes an extra 4-6 days at least from any site, even big commercial sites like eBay and Amazon. (However we did find a site that would ship papyrus from Egypt in a week!) Obviously, buying papyrus online, which was already turning out to be expensive, wasn’t going to happen and since we wanted to make an authentic artifact, it was back to the drawing board.

stone tablet with ancient Greek writing

The next medium we considered was stone. In ancient Greek culture, inscribing on stone was used on monuments for more permanent purposes. We quickly realized that this medium would require a great deal of physical effort in finding the right stone(s) to use and how to engrave them. Lastly, we came to the idea of a clay tablet. These were used throughout Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations and adapted by the mainland Greeks. Clay would be easy enough to find, and easy enough to engrave on, so we found our medium.

The famous Phaistos disc, a fired clay tablet found
at the temple of Phaistos written in Linear A

That night, we all met in the parking lot of the Wilk, and, after finding a ticket on his windshield, Brett drove us all to Hobby Lobby. Talk about craft central. The store was crawling with decorations and photo frames and scrapbooking paper. Thankfully, there was a large selection of clay and we were able to find a small, grayish block of clay (not unlike the clay tablet we were shown in Special Collections) along with one that was 3 times its length that will be used for those translating our artifact.

The next challenge arose with deciding what we should inscribe. We considered using Linear B with some kind of accounting list as was popular at the time or some sample from ancient Greek literature or a famous speech from the classical period. However, due to the fact that one of you may be translating my group’s artifact, I will not tell you and leave you in suspense!

As far as the actual inscribing went, it was fairly easy. We had to wet down the clay to make it moldable, and because there were grooves in the clay (meant to be broken apart), the clay started to break apart. After the initial shock, we realized this could only add authenticity to our artifact as clay is a very malleable and perishable medium. We all took a turn engraving a line and at the end, we had our finished product—a very authentic replica of an ancient Greek clay tablet! But remember, it’s not about the end product, it’s about the process.