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- Iron gall ink (5) (entfernen)
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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.
Parchment has been in use for thousands of years
and has been used as the writing or drawing support for
many important historic works. A variety of analytical
techniques is currently used for routine assessment of the
degree of denaturation of historic parchment; however,
because parchment has a heterogeneous nature, analytical
methods with high spatial resolution are desirable. In this
work, the use of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and
synchrotron-IR (SR-IR) was examined in conjunction with
multivariate data analysis to study degradation of an
extended set of historic parchment samples, and particularly
to investigate the effect of lipids and the presence of iron
gall ink on the degradation processes. In the data analysis,
shrinkage temperature, lipid content, sample age, presence
of ink and accelerated degradation were included. The
analysis of loading factors in partial least-squares regression
and principal component analyses based on SAXS, SR-IR
and other analytical and descriptive data reveals the effect
of lipid removal on diffraction patterns, and lipids are found
to cause the degradation process in parchment to accelerate.
The effect of iron gall ink is also evident, although the
mechanism of ageing is different to that of natural ageing in
the absence of ink. In addition, a historic parchment score
from ca. 1750 is examined, demonstrating the significant
effect of iron gall ink, and lipids and inorganic soiling on its
increased degradation.