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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.
Le monde de la Génizah du Caire et plus particulièrement la collection de Cambridge (CUL) a recu l’attention des chercheurs depuis le XIXe siècle mais peu de recherches ont été faites à ce jour sur l’aspect matériel des manuscrits. Pourtant l’archéométrie est un outil précieux pour mieux comprendre les sociétés qui ont créés ces documents.
Analysis of writing materials in Genizah fragments written during the first half of the XIth century
(2017)
My doctoral dissertation in progress focuses on ink composition on some fragments found in the Cairo Genizah and written by the leaders of the Jewish communities in Fustat during the first half of the XIth century. This is a project at the intersection of historical (Hebrew paleography) and scientific (physics, chemistry and materials science) disciplines. Indeed, I’m analyzing the corpus I constituted (written by Ephraim ben Shemarya and Yephet ben David from the Palestinian congregation and Elhanan ben Shemarya, Abraham ben Sahlan and Sahlan ben Abraham from the Babylonian community). The interests of such a study are numerous: provide insights on trade, local technologies, and social structures. If sufficient data is collected, the tabulated results have the potential for use as an indirect geochronological marker, in particular in the case of iron-gall ink. The composition of the vitriol used for the iron-gall ink preparation depends on the place of extraction. While attributing the vitriol used to a specific source of extraction is seldom possible, a number of origins can be excluded thanks to such analysis. Though ink composition alone cannot be used as a direct geochronological marker, superposition of chemical, palaeographical, codicological, and textual data would help to date and localize and serve as an additional argument for a typology and dating of other Hebrew scripts.