A written work set down to be read and answered — a draft, a telling, a record put in a form that can travel. What is written stays readable after the writing.
Greek πάπυρος (papyros, the papyrus plant), via Latin papyrus and Old French papier. The Greek word itself is a borrowing, probably from Egyptian, and the plant's own Egyptian name is not securely recovered. The material was made from the pith of the reed; the word survived the material by nearly two thousand years, moving to rag pulp and then wood pulp without changing.
A written work set down to be read and answered — a draft, a telling, a record put in a form that can travel. That the word outlived the reed it named is the point: what matters is that writing was made PORTABLE, not what it was carried on.