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The Cairo Geniza is an “archive” discovered in the 19th century in Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, a district in Old Cairo (Egypt). The collection of mostly Jewish documents that vary in genres, languages and writing supports contains a large number of early medieval Hebrew manuscripts.
The Geniza provides sources for the literary, linguistic, historical studies of the various aspects Jewish life. As the documents attest, at least two Jewish communities co-existed in Fustat up to 11th century: a so-called Babylonian and Palestinian. These communities had different leaders, different traditions and lived independently. The differences seem to manifest themselves also in the paleographical, codicological and some material properties of the manuscripts produced by each community.
The aim of this project is to compare the inks used in the Jewish documents depending on different variables: support (paper, parchment), purpose of the manuscript (legal, private, religious), provenance of the scribe. For the determination of the inks type and composition we had to choose non-invasive, non-destructive and portable techniques to analyze the corpus directly on-situ.
The analyses were carried out with a micro-X-ray spectrometer ArtTAX® (Bruker GmbH) and a digital stereomicroscope features built-in LED illumination at 395 nm and 940nm, Dino Lite.
We would like to stress that though the methods of material analysis listed above have been successfully employed in the field of cultural heritage and conservation including ancient and medieval manuscripts they have not yet been used to study fragments from the Cairo Genizah. Therefore, we believe that this research project is a pioneering study that will provide new insights into the history of Hebrew writing materials, their production techniques and materials and, thus, contribute new data to the field of Hebrew paleography.
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.
Results:
- Four types of inks were measured iron gall (vitriolic and non vitriolic), carbonic, mixed and vegetable inks.
- We need to start analyzing systematically the organic part of the inks.
- Great variety in the composition of the inks.
- No correlation between the type of ink used and any other criteria apart from a personal preference.
- Inks purchased by (some) scribes.
- Reconstruction of the chronology of writing and signing of certain legal documents.
- Comparison with documents written by the Muslim court.