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Reuse and Recycling of Papyrus

The reuse of writing material manufactured from papyrus is widely attested. This chapter presents some illustrative examples of how the blank sides of previously written-upon texts have been used, mostly from the time of Augustus until the fourth century AD. Discarded documents and sometimes literary manuscripts were recycled as raw material for a kind of papier-mâché referred to as cartonnage. I discuss this term, suggesting that recycled papyri from book covers should not be called cartonnage papyri, but rather papyri from book covers. The reuse of writing material for later texts, and the recycling of papyri into cartonnage and book covers have been used as evidence both pro and contra the argument that papyrus was expensive. The apparently contradictory evidence for the value of papyrus can be explained by the fact that, while papyrus as a writing material was cheap, once written upon, manuscripts (especially of literary compositions) became costly.