Paper can be said to have been born in ancient Egypt, circa 3000 B.C., with the invention of what the Romans called “papyrus”, based on an earlier Greek name for the material.
Papyrus is not paper in the modern sense of the word, since it was formed from compressed sheets of reed stalks and not a pulp.
When the technique of papermaking found its way into Europe, paper was made not from trees but from a pulp of cotton and linen rag fibers.
[6] The impetus for a new supply source of rags for paper may have come from Dr. Isaiah Deck, an Englishman by birth, a New Yorker by residence, a geologist by trade, an archeologist by hobby and a determined explorer.
On an earlier copper prospecting trip to Jamaica, Deck had evaluated other sources for paper including aloe, plantain, banana and dagger-grass, but none were acceptable.
[8] While searching for the lost mines, Deck couldn’t help but notice the plethora of mummies and mummy parts that turned up in communal burial sites called “mummy pits.” He wrote, “So numerous are they in some localities out of the usual beaten tracks of most travelers, that after the periodical storms whole areas may be seen stripped of sand, and leaving fragments and limbs exposed in such plenty and variety.”[9] Deck did some calculations: assume two thousand years of widespread embalming, an average life span of thirty-three years, and a stable population of eight million.
weight of linen wrappings on mummies…A princess from the late Mr. Pettigrew’s collection was swathed in 40 thicknesses, producing 42 yards of the finest texture.”[10] Deck further calculated that the average consumption of paper in America is about 15 lbs.
Several shiploads of mummies were brought to the mill in Gardiner, Maine and were thus used to make a brown wrapping paper for grocers, butchers and other merchants.
Professor Stanwood continues on to report that the rags supposedly caused a cholera outbreak among the workers since there were no standards for disinfection at this time.
However, since cholera is actually a bacterium, it is unlikely that active disease cells could have survived for centuries in the wrappings, meaning the outbreak at the plant was likely either from poor personal hygiene of the workers or from dirty rags recently imported from deceased Europeans, primarily Frenchmen, and Italians, rather than the mummy rags.
He cites Deck’s references to thrift, concern with alleviating shortages and his precision in his calculations as further evidence of his writing in the manner of Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels.
Joel Munsell was a prolific printer and publisher from Albany, New York and he kept a scrapbook of articles relating to his trade.
For an entry from 1855, Munsell records that a cargo of 1215 bales of Egyptian rags arrived and were purchased by J Priestly & Co. for about 4 cents a pound.
[18] While none of these articles confirm the manufacture of said paper in America, they do prove that the concept was both widely spoken of and under discussion in well-known and respected periodicals of the day.
Another article ran in the April 1873 edition of The Druggists’ Circular and Chemical Gazette that described an 1866 visit of a New York businessman to Alexandria.
[19] This corroborates Hunter’s report that Stanwood’s mill used the mummies to make brown butcher paper.
[22] Baker, however, has located a copy of the paper at the Onondaga Historical Association and confirmed both the wording of the notice and the physical difference of this issue from those before it.
I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway—I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent—pass out a King …[27] This master storyteller was speaking tongue in cheek.
This story has been mentioned by a number of seemingly reliable secondary sources, including an article in Scientific American in 1859 and, more recently, a paper published for BBC News in 2011.