Isaiah 19:7
The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more. The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
Isaiah 19:7 belongs to a prophetic denunciation and judgment upon Egypt. It describes and predicts the drying up of the Nile, rivers, brooks and watercourses and the withering, driving away and disappearance of the paper reeds, vegetation, plants and crops sown beside them. The chapter's prophecy has already been partly fulfilled in Egypt.
This withering belongs to the same period of calamity in which the waters fail and fishing and linen and cotton work are brought to ruin. When the Nile's waters dry up, the plants and crops growing along its banks wither, leaving the land barren and contributing to its destruction as a habitable country. The prophecy concerning Egypt to which the verse belongs refers to the preaching of the gospel in Egypt and Assyria in New Testament times.
The drying has come true in Egypt where in one day's travel in the Delta forty dry watercourses are crossed and water-skins are needed now around ruined cities whose walls were once blockaded by Greek and Roman navies. It stands together with Egypt's invasion and subjection by Nebuchadnezzar and afterward by Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes and Turks as proof fulfilled over twenty-four centuries. It stands together also with its perpetual rule by strangers and slaves with no native prince, its becoming the basest of kingdoms, and the ceasing of its idols and images.
The prediction was of the complete disappearance of the papyrus paper-reeds and of every cultivated plant by the brooks, and Egypt's lack of papyrus is a literal fulfillment of that prediction. This overcame great improbability because in Isaiah's time the indispensable papyrus flourished through the whole Thebaid, Heptanomos and Delta, was protected by stringent laws for its cultivation, and was held under the special care of local deities and planted, tended and cut with almost religious ceremonial. It was adaptable for paper, cloth, brushes, sails, cordage, shipping baskets, sandals, hats, skirts, carpets, chairs, seats, food for men and animals from its tender shoots, syrup and medicine, cradles, Pharaoh's throne canopy, street processions, house paintings, granite temple carvings, ladies' hair blossoms and neck amulets, and altar offerings for the dead. It was the plaything of the child and scepter of the god, the glory of the country, the staple of its commerce and the hieroglyphic emblem of its name, so that withholding its supply let Ptolemy Philadelphus repress a rival Pergamean library while opening the Delta markets spread Greek poetry and Roman philosophy through the known world.
After thirty centuries of oppression, superstition and neglect the artificial lakes where it was cultivated dried up, rush after rush was cut down to warm baths and litter horses with no successors planted, and the hot south wind and desert sands exterminated it. Not a single indigenous papyrus remains in Egypt proper, with only a stream in Sicily and the marshes of Merom in Palestine holding the nearly extinct plant and the conservatories of London, Sion and Kew holding more living papyri than can be found from Syene to Alexandria.