ABSTRACT
Papyrus is a reed found commonly in Egypt; the stalks were cut into strips and then stuck together in two layers at right angles to each other. It was customary (and easier) to write along the fibers, not across them, so that if only one side was written on, as would normally be the case in a papyrus roll, that side would have the text aligned with the strips, and the papyrus would be rolled in such a way as to have the writing on the inside. The inside is called the recto, the outside the verso. In those notuncommon cases where we cannot recognize how the papyrus was rolled, the side where the writing is aligned with the strips is called the front, the other side the back. Although most commonly scribes wrote only on the front, there are papyri that contain writing on both sides, or even only on the back.1
