papyrus

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun An aquatic sedge (Cyperus papyrus) native to Africa, having a tall stem and an umbellate inflorescence with numerous arching rays.
• noun A material made from the pith or the stems of this sedge, used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans especially to write or paint on.
• noun A document written on this material.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The paper -reed or -rush, Cyperus Papyrus (Papyrus antiquorum), abounding on marshy river-banks in Abyssinia, Palestine, and Sicily, now almost extinct in Egypt.
• noun An ancient scroll, book, or other document, or a fragment of the same, written on papyrus.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Bot.) A tall rushlike plant (Cyperus Papyrus) of the Sedge family, formerly growing in Egypt, and now found in Abyssinia, Syria, Sicily, etc. The stem is triangular and about an inch thick.
• noun The material upon which the ancient Egyptians wrote. It was formed by cutting the stem of the plant into thin longitudinal slices, which were gummed together and pressed.
• noun A manuscript written on papyrus; esp., pl., written scrolls made of papyrus.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A plant in the sedge family, Cyperus papyrus, native to the Nile river valley.
• noun A material similar to paper made from the papyrus plant.
• noun countable A scroll or document written on papyrus.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun paper made from the papyrus plant by cutting it in strips and pressing it flat; used by ancient Egyptians and Greeks and Romans
• noun a document written on papyrus
• noun tall sedge of the Nile valley yielding fiber that served many purposes in historic times