The Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus (also known simply as the Ramesseum Papyrus) is the oldest known surviving illustrated papyrus roll. It contains a ceremonial play written to celebrate the accession to the throne of Senusret I of the Twelfth Dynasty and is dated to around 1980 BC. It was discovered in the Ramesseum, from which it gets its name. The text of the roll is in linear hieroglyphs written in narrow, vertical columns. The text occupies the top four-fifths of the scroll and the illustrations the bottom. The scenes are arranged in a manner similar to a modern comic strip with the Pharaoh, in the role of Horus, appearing multiple times. Scenes are divided from each other by vertical lines. The drawing style is so simple that the figures are little more than enlarged hieroglyphs.
Famous quotes containing the words dramatic and/or papyrus:
“The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province of woman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.”
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)
“When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 2:3.