To form a roll the several sheets «oXX, F .cara, were joined together with paste (glue being too hard), but not more than twenty sheets in a roll (scapus).
The scapus seems to have been a standard length of papyrus, as sold by the stationers.
Its body is divisible into three portions, an upper capitulum bearing the mouth and tentacles, a median scapus covered by a friable cuticle, and a terminal physa which is rounded.
Both capitulum and physa can be retracted: within the scapus.