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 - 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 JF - Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 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 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-523708 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01320-5 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 - Albarrán Martínez, M. J. A1 - Ghigo, Tea T1 - The practice of writing inside an Egyptian monastic settlement JF - Heritage Science N2 - Over the last few years, the Federal Institute for material research (BAM, Berlin) together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC, University of Hamburg) have initiated a systematic material investigation of black inks produced from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (ca. fourth century CE–fourteenth/fifteenth centuries CE), aimed primarily at extending and complementing findings from previous sporadic studies. Part of this systematic investigation has focused on Egyptian Coptic manuscripts, and the present preliminary study is one of its outputs. It centres on a corpus of 45 Coptic manuscripts—43 papyri and 2 ostraca—preserved at the Palau-Ribes and Roca-Puig collections in Barcelona. The manuscripts come from the Monastery of Apa Apollo at Bawit, one of the largest monastic settlements in Egypt between the Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic Period (sixth–eighth centuries CE). The composition of their black inks was investigated in situ using near-infrared reflectography (NIRR) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The analyses determined that the manuscripts were written using different types of ink: pure carbon ink; carbon ink containing iron; mixed inks containing carbon, polyphenols and metallic elements; and iron-gall ink. The variety of inks used for the documentary texts seems to reflect the articulate administrative system of the monastery of Bawit. This study reveals that, in contrast to the documents, written mostly with carbon-based inks, literary biblical texts were written with iron-gall ink. The frequent reuse of papyrus paper for certain categories of documents may suggest that carbon-based inks were used for ephemeral manuscripts, since they were easy to erase by abrasion. KW - Papyrus KW - Ink analysis KW - Coptic manuscripts KW - Bawit KW - Mixed ink KW - Near-infrared refectography KW - X-ray fuorescence PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-528833 DO - https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-021-00541-0 SN - 2050-7445 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - Springer Open CY - Rome, Italy AN - OPUS4-52883 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grzegorz, Nehring A1 - Krutzsch, M. A1 - Rabin, Ira T1 - Tuschenanalyse im P 11702 T1 - Ink Analysis in P 11702 JF - Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete N2 - Near-inframed reflectography and imaging X-Ray flourescence analysis reveal that carbon inks of two different compositions were used in the papyrus manuscript Berlin P 11702. in contrast with the writing ink, one of the carbon drawing inks contained a significant addition of iron. This result emphasises the need for routine instrumental ink analysis. KW - Papyrus KW - Ink analysis KW - X-Ray flourescence spectroscopy KW - Near-infrared refelctography PY - 2021 DO - https://doi.org/10.1515/apf-2021-0026 SN - 1867-1551 VL - 67 IS - 2 SP - 277 EP - 282 PB - De Gruyter AN - OPUS4-53942 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -