Frank Peder, age 15, of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, for his question:

What exactly is papyrology?

The ancestor of our word "paper" is "papyrus," the name of a reed that grows by the muddy banks of the Nile. The ancient Egyptians dried, flattened and glued papy¬rus reeds to make writing paper. Ancient Egypt, of course, had a fabulously interest¬ing history and masses of its records have been preserved through the ages. Unr countable numbers of papyrus writings and drawings have been found in the tombs of the pharoahs, the rulers of ancient Egypt. Archeologists and Egyptologists who specialize in the history of ancient Egypt have been poring over these papyrus documents for ages. This special field is so immense that it required a name of its own. It seemed natural to call it "papyrology," the study of papyruses.

The documents span thousands of years during which time the art of writing developed from pictures to letters and great changes occurred in the languages. Many mysteries involved in deciphering these documents were solved by the translations on the ancient Rosetta Stone. Nowadays, papyrologists use modern scientific methods to date their manuscripts and solve many other problems that made their work almost impossible in the past. But their job is far from finished.