TY - JOUR A1 - Nehring, Grzegorz A1 - Girard, Solène A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Conservation and Technical Evaluation of an Early Medieval Papyrus Codex JF - Studies in Conservation N2 - In 2005, a team of Polish archaeologists discovered three Coptic codices, two on papyrus and one on parchment, in the rubbish dump of a hermitage at Sheik Abd el-Gurna, Egypt. While the parchment codex and the remains of the bindings of the papyrus ones have been conserved, the text blocks of the papyrus codices were opened and disassembled and after being disinfected remained untouched for nearly 15 years, until the current project started. Currently, all three books are stored in the collection of the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Our team undertook the conservation of and archaeometric research on the papyrus codices. The first of the books contains the Canons of Pseudo-Basil, while the second is an Encomium of St. Pisenthios. Both codices have been palaeographically dated to the seventh-eighth centuries CE. In this paper, we describe our project and present the results of the work carried out on the Canons of Pseudo-Basil. Our work involved photography in transmitted light, measurements of the thickness of the papyrus leaves, and digital microscopy under three-light illumination. These measurements allowed us to determine the types of the inks and characterize the papyrus writing substrate. For conservation, we used a novel method developed in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin that comprises suspending papyrus folios on a translucent, extremely thin Japanese paper inside glass frames without the use of adhesives.In 2005, a team of Polish archaeologists discovered three Coptic codices, two on papyrus and one on parchment, in the rubbish dump of a hermitage at Sheik Abd el-Gurna, Egypt. While the parchment codex and the remains of the bindings of the papyrus ones have been conserved, the text blocks of the papyrus codices were opened and disassembled and after being disinfected remained untouched for nearly 15 years, until the current project started. Currently, all three books are stored in the collection of the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Our team undertook the conservation of and archaeometric research on the papyrus codices. The first of the books contains the Canons of Pseudo-Basil, while the second is an Encomium of St. Pisenthios. Both codices have been palaeographically dated to the seventh-eighth centuries CE. In this paper, we describe our project and present the results of the work carried out on the Canons of Pseudo-Basil. Our work involved photography in transmitted light, measurements of the thickness of the papyrus leaves, and digital microscopy under three-light illumination. These measurements allowed us to determine the types of the inks and characterize the papyrus writing substrate. For conservation, we used a novel method developed in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin that comprises suspending papyrus folios on a translucent, extremely thin Japanese paper inside glass frames without the use of adhesives. KW - Papyrus KW - Codex KW - Conservation KW - Iron gall ink KW - Coptic PY - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-570998 DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2023.2183554 SN - 0039-3630 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Taylor & Francis AN - OPUS4-57099 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cohen, Zina A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Rabin, Ira ED - Lattuati-Derieux, Agnès ED - Ribeyrol, Charlotte ED - Heginbotham, Arlen T1 - Black Carolingian inks under examination. Part 1: recipes and literature survey JF - Techne : la science au service de l'histoire de l'art et des civilisation N2 - Black writing materials of different types and compositions have varied in use over time and different geographical regions. With this paper, we would like to contribute to their study by listing and reviewing recipes for black writing inks that were in circulation in the Carolingian Empire as well as by referencing the archaeometric analyses of the black inks used in the manuscripts. The studies presented here that involved the humanities and natural sciences provide new insights into how the scholars of the early Medieval Ages organized manuscripts. N2 - L’emploi des differents types de materiaux d’ecriture noirs et leurs compositions ont varie selon les epoques et les regions. Nous souhaitons ici contribuer a leur etude en repertoriant et en analysant les recettes d’encres de calligraphie noires en circulation dans l’Empire carolingien, ainsi qu’en procedant au referencement des analyses archeometriques des encres noires utilisees dans les manuscrits. Faisant appel aux sciences humaines et aux sciences naturelles, ces analyses apportent un eclairage nouveau sur la maniere dont les savants du haut Moyen Age organisaient les manuscrits. KW - Ink KW - Manuscript KW - Middle Ages KW - Recipes KW - Ink analyses KW - Carolingian PY - 2023 SN - 1254-7867 VL - 2023 IS - 55 SP - 90 EP - 95 PB - Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France CY - Paris AN - OPUS4-58839 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Berkes, L. A1 - Nehring, Grzegorz A1 - Bonnerot, O. A1 - Krutzsch, M. A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Richter, T. S. T1 - Mixed Inks in Two Coptic Documents from the Hermopolite Region Relating to Lease Business JF - Pylon N2 - In this article, we present two Coptic papyri, P 11934 and P 11935 from the Berlin collection excavated in Ashmunein (ancient Hermopolis) by Otto Rubensohn in 1906. We employ a multi-disciplinary approach that takes into account both their materiality – writing support as well as ink – and their content, as has become ‘best practice’. 1 Material aspects of written documents have traditionally been the purview of papyrologists. Recently developed methods of scientific analysis generate sets of archaeometric data with the potential to improve understanding of the materiality of ancient document production, as well as to yield new evidence for genuine papyrological research questions. To achieve this, a large corpus of comparative data needs to be built. Our contribution offers a first step in this direction. We aim at presenting the papyri, which were selected because of the ink corrosion during conservation work at the Berlin collection, in a format that is exhaustive both for material and textual aspects. The inks from both papyri were analysed using a combination of techniques, contributing to our better understanding of the development of ink technology in Late Antiquity. KW - Coptic papyri KW - Methods of scientific analysis KW - Sets of archaeometric data KW - Mixed Inks KW - Ink corrosion KW - Ancient document production PY - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-579948 DO - https://doi.org/10.48631/pylon.2023.3.98234 SN - 2751-4722 VL - 2023/3 IS - 3 SP - 1 EP - 18 PB - Ceative Commons Attribution ShareAlike CY - Heidelberg, Germany AN - OPUS4-57994 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -