Among the earliest published images of papyrus rolls in European books are the researches of the German philologist
Christian Gottlieb Schwarz who published a number of dissertations of different aspects of early books and libraries beginning in 1716. Six of these dissertations that had been previously published separately were collected five years after Schwarz's death, edited by
Johann Christian Leuschner and published in Leipzig as
De ornamentis librorum et varia rei librariae veterum supellectile dissertationum antiquariarum hexas.
Schwarz's images are notable because they were based upon images of details from ancient libraries that he might have found in books or manuscripts, or possibly in ancient sculpture. Schwarz died in 1751 just before the discovery of the excavation of the Villa of the Papyri and the
Herculaneum papyri in 1752. Since the library of the Villa of the Papyri was first Roman library ever found intact with the only intact Roman papyrus rolls, badly charred for being preserved in lava, the actual appearance of papyrus rolls, and how they were maintained in Roman libraries had to be inferred prior the excavation of of the library of the Villa of the Papyri.
Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
Figure 5 shoes a barefoot ancient person holding a papyrus roll. Behind him appears to be a scrinium or bucket-shaped chest for carrying papyrus rolls. Figure six shows examples of scrinia. Figure eight shows a student holding a papyrus roll open, presumably for his teacher. This image is probably not a very accurate depiction of the way a typical papyrus roll would have been opened for reading.
Mezzotint portrait of Christian Gottlieb Schwarz engraved by Johann Nusbiegel after a painting by Johann Justin Preissler.
