At some point, somebody wet it. Where there are holes, the ink was stamped upside down on the other side of the parchment.
After using it for decades as a catalog, the papyrus was later ... sold as pulp paper.
One might wonder how a single papyrus can conceal such a big treasure. Well, it was used at different times, for different purposes, and by different people.
This papyrus is returning the most ancient geographic map of the classical world and helps write new pages of ancient history.
However, it wasn't burnt, neither sold as pulp paper. A few years later, its blank spots were re-used for other sketches.
