TY - GEN A1 - Rabin, Ira ED - Wandrey, T1 - Building a bridge from the Dead Sea Scrolls N2 - As part of the Qumran project conducted at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin between 2007 and 2010, my colleagues and I developed a new, integrated methodology for determining the original and acquired properties of highly heterogeneous Dead Sea Scrolls. The purpose of this methodology is to help scholars determine the provenance of fragments of the scrolls and sort and compare them more easily than in the past. Since our measurements allowed us to differentiate between the minerals originating from the production processes and the sediments accrued during storage in the caves in Qumran, we were able to reconstruct the treatment of hides and discovered that at least two distinct parchmentproduction techniques co-existed at the beginning of the common era. The reconstruction of workmanship on animal hides in Antiquity raised doubts about the validity of the current definition of parchment, which is based on a production technique known from the Middle Ages. We hope that our current work will also help researchers understand the characteristic properties of gewil, qelaf and dukhsustos better.¹ The evolution and socio-geographic distribution of writing inks in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages are the second focus of our investigative work at BAM. We use X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) to determine the chemical composition of inks and NIR reflectography for their typology. We are amply assisted in our ambitious enterprise by codicologists and palaeographers who have adopted our methodology and conduct field studies of their own. KW - Dead Sea Scrolls KW - Medieval Jewish manuscripts KW - Material analysis PY - 2017 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-435582 DO - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546422-0002 VL - 13 SP - 309 EP - 321 PB - de Gruyter CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-43558 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - GEN A1 - Cohen, Zina A1 - Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith A1 - Hahn, Oliver A1 - Rabin, Ira ED - Wandrey, T1 - Composition analysis of writing materials in Geniza fragments N2 - Our current projects focus on the material analysis of the writing materials kept in the Taylor-Schechter Collection at Cambridge University Library, which houses the largest collection of Cairo Geniza fragments, about 190,000. Although Geniza manuscripts have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, the material aspects of these documents seem to have been largely neglected. The current study aims to obtain information on the composition of the writing supports and the inks that were used, the production of the original manuscripts and the history of their degradation. The collected data should supplement the description based on Hebrew palaeography and codicology. Moreover, a characterisation of the writing materials would provide insights on trade, local production techniques and social structures. The tabulated results have the potential to be used as geo-chronological markers if sufficient data is collected. For our study, we chose Hebrew legal documents and letters from three communities that co-existed in Fustat (today Cairo) in the 11th century: the Jerusalemite (or ‘Palestinian’) community, the Babylonian community and the Karaites, three different communities with different scribal traditions. In addition to this, we studied non-biblical scrolls attributed to the Palestinian and Babylonian communities. The question we addressed was whether we can correlate the use of a specific type of ink to an objective criterion. For our analysis at Cambridge University Library, we used a number of protocols developed at BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) in Berlin and at the Centre for Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg (CSMC). These include reflectographic examination followed by non-destructive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis using transportable instruments so that the analysis can be carried out in situ. We have illustrated our approach here by providing two examples. The first one describes our investigation of the leather fragment containing a portion of the Babylonian Talmud on its hair side (TS Misc.26.53.17). The second example illustrates our ability to compare iron-gall inks using the XRF method. In this case, we explored the question of the codicological attribution of three fragments (TS F17.4, TS 12.755 and TS 12.756) to the same Talmud manuscript. KW - Cairo Genizah PY - 2017 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-435590 DO - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110546422-013 VL - 13 SP - 323 PB - de Gruyter CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-43559 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Łojewska, J. A1 - Rabin, Ira A1 - Pawcenis, D. A1 - Bagniuk, J. A1 - Aksamit-Koperska, M.-A. A1 - Sitarz, M. A1 - Missori, M. A1 - Krutzsch, M. T1 - Recognizing ancient papyri by a combination of spectroscopic, diffractional and chromatographic analytical tools N2 - Ancient papyri are a written heritage of culture that flourished more than 3000 years ago in Egypt. One of the most significant collections in the world is housed in the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in Berlin, from where the samples for our investigation come. The papyrologists, curators and conservators of such collections search intensely for the analytical detail that would allow ancient papyri to be distinguished from modern fabrications, in order to detect possible forgeries, assess papyrus deterioration state, and improve the design of storage conditions and conservation methods. This has become the aim of our investigation. The samples were studied by a number of methods, including spectroscopic (FTIR, fluorescent-FS, Raman) diffractional (XRD) and chromatographic (size exclusion chromatography-SEC), selected in order to determine degradation parameters: overall oxidation of lignocellulosic material, degree of polymerization and crystallinity of cellulose. The results were correlated with those obtained from carefully selected model samples including modern papyri and paper of different composition aged at elevated temperature in humid air. The methods were classified in the order SEC > FS > FTIR > XRD, based on their effectiveness in discriminating the state of papyri degradation. However, the most trustworthy evaluation of the age of papyri samples should rely on several methods. KW - Archaeometry KW - FTIR KW - XRD KW - Raman KW - Chromatography KW - Papyrology PY - 2017 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-428704 DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46236 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 7 SP - 46236, 1 EP - 46236, 12 AN - OPUS4-42870 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -