What is papyrus like compared to paper?

It’s not as thick as vellum, and much more absorbent. It isn’t as smooth as most paper, you could write on it with pen or pencil, but given the expense most people would consider a high quality calligraphy pen and ink for writing on it.

Calligraphy on papyrus is a hellacious pain in the ass. It’s too rough, skips the pen, spatter everywhere…

I haven’t tried a reed pen yet, which is more likely what was used in period. I have a feeling it would work better, since the pen would be more rigid.

@Seek knows much more about it than I do.

Thanks @zenvelo and @Seek. I have been reading the book Count Like an Egyptian, which describes ancient Egyptian mathematics. The book tries to provide some cultural context. It says that day to day calculations by the scribes were done on pottery shards, but reference tables would be on papyrus or, in rare instances, on leather. It got me to thinking about what the nature of papyrus is and what it would be like to write on it.

My knee-jerk was that it was like parchment, which seems totally false.
GQ
I hadn’t thought of the challenge of writing smoothly over such an uneven surface.

Parchment has the opposite problem. It’s slippery and hardly absorbent at all. Ink made for parchment has gum Arabic added just to make the ink stick to the page.

It can also be easily scraped off and reused, which is helpful.

As nouns the difference between paper and papyrus is that paper is a sheet material used for writing on or printing on (or as a non-waterproof container), usually made by draining cellulose fibres from a suspension in water while papyrus is (usually|uncountable) a plant in the sedge family, cyperus papyrus , native to the nile river valley.

As a adjective paper is made of paper.
As a verb paper is to apply paper to.