TY - CONF A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Krutzsch, M. T1 - The Writing Surface Papyrus and its Materials N2 - Our experimental knowledge about the inks of antiquity and late antiquity rarely goes beyond their visual description. In rare cases, inks typology has been determined by means of microscopy and reflectography, i.e. using their physical and optical properties, respectively. Since carbon, plant and iron gall inks belong to different classes of compounds they could be easily distinguished had only pure inks been used. Even these crude observations suggest that the inks used differed greatly in their composition. Reconstruction of the ink recipes with the help of advanced non-destructive analytical techniques could serve as a powerful accessory for in the studies of ancient papyri. The proposed paper will present a short survey of the methods of material analysis and the challenges offered by ancient inks. The examples of the ink studies from the collections of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Egyptian Museum in Berlin will conclude the paper. T2 - 28th Congress of Papyrology CY - Barcelona, Spain DA - 01.08.2016 KW - Papyrus KW - Ink PY - 2019 SP - 773 EP - 781 AN - OPUS4-49532 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nehring, Grzegorz A1 - Bonnerot, Olivier A1 - Gerhardt, M. A1 - Krutzsch, M. A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Looking for the missing link in the evolution of black inks N2 - In the transition from carbon to iron-gall inks, the two documents from the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in Berlin with shelfmarks P 13500 and P 13501 discussed in this work present an important case. Their inks appear brownish, although they date back to the fourth and third century BCE, when carbon inks are believed to have been commonly if not exclusively used. Using imaging micro-X-ray fluorescence and infrared reflectography, we discovered that the inks in both documents contain a significant amount of copper in addition to carbon. Comparing the extant recipes for black writing inks and the experimental evidence, we suggest that these inks are a transition between the pure carbon and the iron-gall inks. Such inks may have been quite common before the production of iron-gall ink was clearly understood and established. KW - Black writing ink KW - Hellenistic KW - Papyrus KW - XRF imaging KW - NIR imaging PY - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-523708 VL - 13 IS - 4 SP - Article 71 PB - Springer AN - OPUS4-52370 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nehring, Grzegorz A1 - Girard, Solène A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Conservation and Technical Evaluation of an Early Medieval Papyrus Codex 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 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-570998 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 -