To be pedantic, also not paper. They dried the reeds and glued strips together, rather than pulping them. No acid in the treatment for a start... Now, as for what the best paper is, not far from my parents' they still make paper by hand at Wookey Hole Mill. Originally set up to recycle cloth, they now import raw cotton from the US (recycled cloth contains too much artificial fibre). But the treatment for the rags was to boil them up in caustic soda (NaOH), not acid... I think linen (flax) fibres make pretty good paper. Manila (?sp) fibres make strong envelopes. How about printing on Tyvek? That stuff's pretty indestructible. I don't know whether you can get the stuff in the US, but in the UK slate was used extensively as a roofing material until quite recently (you can still get new slates, but most new buildings use modern composite materials in roof tiles). Most building salvage places will sell you secondhand roofing slates by the box. Not suitable for chiselling, though - better to use some sort of grinding tip on a miniature hand drill. Another suggestion. The Mormons claim their scripture was preserved on metal plates (metal foil?) for well over 2000 years. You could ask for specifications - alas, the originals have mysteriously vanished... Philip.