TY - JOUR A1 - Bonnerot, Olivier A1 - Del Mastro, G. A1 - Hammerstaedt, J. A1 - Mocella, V. A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - XRF ink Analysis of some Herculaneum papyri JF - Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik N2 - Recent research has suggested that some of the inks used in Herculaneum papyri do not consist of pure carbon. Starting from this finding, in June 2018 a preliminary campaign of analysis by means of X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) of external portions removed mechanically from their original rolls in the eighteenth century (the so-called scorze) took place at the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. Also in this case, the aim of the survey was to investigate the ink composition in order to detect possible traces of metal. This article sums up the results of this survey. KW - Herculaneum papyri KW - Ink KW - XRF PY - 2020 SP - 50 EP - 52 AN - OPUS4-51193 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Kaska, K. ED - Uhlirz, T1 - Why Do We Need to Study Inks? T2 - CHTN 23, 2018 proceedings N2 - While studying the socio-geographic history of inks, division 4.5 (Analysis of cultural artefacts and assets) of the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) in Berlin together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg has developed a protocol for ink analysis. It consists of a primary screening to determine the type of the ink, and a subsequent in-depth analysis using several spectroscopic techniques. Using this protocol, scientists can assist scholars in addressing a rather broad range of historical questions that cannot be answered unequivocally through scholarly research alone. Among these are investigations on collaboration between scribes and scriptoria, on the usage and annotation of manuscripts and on their path through time and space in general. This research can thus help to reconstruct the circumstances of the production of written heritage as well as their history and transmission. To facilitate the dialogue between the scholars and the scientists a simple optical tool was developed to allow the scholars to perform preliminary ink analysis required for formulation of the question that in turn can be answered by scientific in-depth investigations. In this paper, ink types and their identification method is accompanied by examples of the recent work conducted on parchment manuscripts in the Austrian National Library. T2 - Congress Visual Heritage, CHNT 23 CY - Vienna, Austria DA - 15.12.2018 KW - Ink KW - Parchment PY - 2020 SP - 1.1 EP - 1.9 CY - Wien AN - OPUS4-50242 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gruskovà, J. A1 - Martin, G. A1 - Kresten, O. A1 - Mitthoff, F. A1 - Kaska, K. A1 - Hofmann, C. A1 - Kreuzer, W. A1 - Phelps, M. A1 - Boydston, K. A1 - Easton Jr., R. L. A1 - Knox, K. T. A1 - Kelbe, D. A1 - Kasotakis, D. A1 - Christens-Barry, W. A. A1 - Stewart, D. A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Glaser, L. A1 - Garrevoet, J. A1 - Shevchuk, I. A1 - Klumpp, S. A1 - Deckers, D. A1 - Buck, J. ED - Cronier, M. ED - Mondrain, B. T1 - Insights-into-the-Digital-Recovery-of-the-Scythica-Vindobonesia T2 - Collège de France – CNRS Centre de recherche d'histoire et civilisation de Byzance N2 - The Scythica Vindobonensia, the new fragments on Gothic incursions into Roman provinces in the Balkans in the middle of the third century AD that were revealed some years ago in a Greek palimpsest at the Austrian National Library in Vienna (ÖNB), are commonly considered as one of the most important additions of the last decades to the corpus of texts from classical Antiquity. Tere is a high degree of confdence among scholars in supposing that the fragments come from the lost work Scythica written in Greek by the third-century historian P. Herennius Dexippus (Δέξιππος) of Athens. The new fragments have hence also been called Dexippus Vindobonensis. In his Scythica, Dexippus recorded wars of the Romans with the Goths (and other tribes) whom he called Scythians. The work had been hitherto known only from excerpts and quotes by later authors. Eight pages of a Byzantine manuscript copy of the ancient text have survived hidden underneath the visible surface of the last four parchment folios of the Vienna manuscript Historicus graecus 73, f. 192r -195v4. The copy is written in a Greek calligraphic minuscule which has been estimated by palaeographers to be of the middle or the second half of the eleventh century. In the thirteenth century, the text (on each of the eight pages arranged in one column, with 30 lines per page) was washed of the parchment and the valuable material made from animal skin was re-used for Christian texts. The new writing largely covered the faded remnants of the original text. It thus became hidden from the human eye for more than seven hundred years. Its discovery by Jana Grusková, a classical philologist specialized in the transmission of Greek texts, resulted from a systematic review of all Greek palimpsests kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna at the beginning of the twenty-first century and a detailed examination of the four folios in 2007-20097. KW - Scythica Vindobonensia, KW - Gothic incursions KW - A Greek palimpsest KW - Antiquity KW - Byzantine manuscript KW - Vienna manuscript PY - 2020 SN - 978-2-916716-81-7 SN - 0577-1471 VL - 2020 IS - 24/1 SP - 945 EP - 967 PB - Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance CY - Paris ET - 1 AN - OPUS4-53843 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gordon, N. A1 - Bonnerot, Olivier A1 - Rabin, Ira ED - Friedrich, M. ED - Quenzer, J. T1 - Inks Used to Write the Divine Name in a Thirteenth-Century Ashkenazic Torah Scroll: Erfurt 7 (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. or. fol. 1216) JF - Manuscript Cultures N2 - The scribe of ‘Erfurt 7’, a thirteenth-century Torah scroll now kept in Berlin, initially left blank spaces for the divine appellations Elohim ( אלהים ) and YHWH Elohim ( ,(יהוה אלהים which were filled in during a second stage of writing. The appearance of the ink employed to write the appellations was significantly darker than that of the surrounding ink. X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) has shown that the light and dark brown inks had similar elemental compositions, but contained different ratios of iron to potassium, which could be explained by the use of different batches of ink. According to some medieval sources, the divine appellations were sometimes filled in during a second stage of writing in the presence of ten men from the Jewish community. In Erfurt 7, the two-stage procedure was only performed in the first 1.5 columns of the original sheets, suggesting it may have been part of a public ceremony inaugurating the writing of the divine names in the scroll. Erfurt 7 emerges from this study not only as a ritual object used for liturgy, but as a rallying point for the Jews of Erfurt to come together as a community to express their reverence for the written form of God’s name. The divine name YHWH ( יהוה ) was written in a smaller script than the surrounding text on three replacement sheets using the same two-stage procedure. The ink used on the replacement sheets contained zinc, which is characteristic of other Erfurt manuscripts as well. This suggests that Erfurt was the place where the scroll was used, cherished and eventually repaired. KW - Torah KW - Ink KW - Erfurt KW - 13th century PY - 2020 SN - 1867–9617 VL - 15 SP - 163 EP - 184 AN - OPUS4-52965 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Glaser, L. A1 - Shevchuk, I. A1 - Tolkiehn, M. A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Hahn, Oliver T1 - Improving Iron Gall Ink Palimpsest X-ray Fluorescence Element Mapping Analysis T2 - CHTN 23, 2018 proceedings N2 - In the recent years multispectral imaging and X-ray Fluorescence element mapping have established themselves as a well working two step approach, when dealing with faded, erased or overwritten text in iron gall ink. During the last years a lot was done to improve the mere technical side of the techniques. Especially in the case of XRF mapping experiments the acquisition speed needed to be increased to allow mapping in the high resolution demanded by the challenges at hand. High resolution in moderate times can now be achieved, but with the price of proportionally increased amount of data that needs to be processed ideally in parallel to the measurement. The classical approach in XRF spectroscopy of elemental fitting of the spectral data does not even come close to fulfill any on the fly processing time constraints and will consume too much processing time in the foreseeable future. In this paper we will discuss the applicability of modern statistical data processing methods to XRF mapping of iron gall ink palimpsests. We will present a comparison of a new approach based on principle and independent component analysis (PCA and ICA) and the standard element mapping method. We will show that a reduction in processing time of almost two orders of magnitude can easily be achieved. T2 - Kongress Visual Heritage, CHNT 23 CY - Vienna, Austria DA - 15.11.2018 KW - Palimpsest KW - Iron-gall ink PY - 2020 SP - 1.1 EP - 1.9 AN - OPUS4-50243 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ghigo, Tea A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Gaining Perspective into the Materiality of Manuscripts: The Contribution of Archaeometry to the Study of the Inks of the White Monastery Codices T2 - Coptic Literature in Context (4th-13th cent.): Cultural Landscape, Literary Production, and Manuscript Archaeology N2 - An interdisciplinary approach to the study of manuscript traditions is here applied to the analysis of the leaves from the White Monastery, one of the greatest centres of literary production in Late Antique Egypt. In the framework of the ‘PAThs’ project, archaeometric analyses complement the information pieced together by a range of disciplines in the field of humanities. The use of different complementary analytical techniques provides information on the type of ink used and its elemental composition, unveiling interesting details regarding the materials and methodology of manufacturing of writing media. Moreover, this contribution takes a step forward and discusses the possible existence of a regional arrangement in the elemental composition revealed in the inks studied. KW - Manuscript making KW - Archaeometry KW - Ink analysis KW - Interdisciplinary approach KW - Coptic studies PY - 2020 SP - 273 EP - 282 AN - OPUS4-51003 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Hahn, Oliver ED - Michel, C. ED - Friedrich, M. T1 - Detection of Fakes: The Merits and Limits of Non-Invasive Materials Analysis T2 - Studies in Manuscript Cultures N2 - This paper addresses the sensitive issue of authenticating unprovenanced manuscripts of high monetary value to certify they are genuine. Over the last decade, the popularity of material studies of manuscripts using non-destructive testing (NDT) has increased enormously. These studies are held in especially high esteem in the case of suspicious writings due to the methodological rigour they are reputed to contribute to debate. We would like to stress that materials analysis alone cannot prove that an object is genuine. Unfortunately, audiences with a humanities background often tend to disregard the technical details and treat any published interpretation of instrumental analysis as an objective finding. Four examples are outlined here to illustrate what questionable contributions the natural sciences can make in describing manuscripts that have actually been forged. KW - Fakes KW - Non-invasive analysis KW - Limitations PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-517202 SN - 978-3-11-071422-7 DO - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110714333 SN - 2365-9696 VL - 20 SP - 281 EP - 290 PB - Walter de Gruyter GmbH CY - Berlin/Boston AN - OPUS4-51720 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boaretto, E. A1 - Newman, H. A1 - Shevchuk, I. A1 - Breterniz, S. A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Date, Materiality and Historical Significance of P.Köln Inv. 5941 JF - COMSt Bulletin N2 - The paper presents the results of the radiocarbon dating and ink analysis of a leather fragment bearing an important liturgical text in Hebrew from the early centuries of the common era. The work initiated by the scholarly interest in the text stresses the importance of the date and materiality of the manuscripts and closes with an appeal to the curators of manuscript collections. KW - Mixed ink KW - Radiocarbon KW - Leather PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-528063 DO - https://doi.org/10.25592/uhhfdm.8471 VL - 6/2 SP - 173 EP - 186 AN - OPUS4-52806 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ghigo, Tea A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Buzi, P. T1 - Black Egyptian inks in Late Antiquity: new insights on their manufacture and use JF - Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences N2 - We present here our methodological approach applied to the study of Egyptian inks in Late Antiquity. It is based on an interdisciplinary strategy, bringing together a variety of disciplines from humanities and natural sciences, and it aims at systematically collecting a statistically relevant amount of data regarding the composition of the inks. The application of a wellestablished, non-invasive protocol that includes near-infrared imaging and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy for in situ measurements enables the identification and characterisation of inks dating from the end of Late Antiquity onwards. However, sometimes this method limits our understanding when characterising more ancient inks. Trying to overcome these limitations, the potential of a new device for the characterisation of organic compounds is here explored by conducting preliminary tests on mock samples. In this work, we present the results from 77 codicological units that include some of the earliest manuscripts of our corpus that presently lists 159 units. KW - Ink KW - Archaeometry KW - Manuscripts KW - Coptic KW - Egypt PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-503893 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00977-3 VL - 12 IS - 3 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Springer AN - OPUS4-50389 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -