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Eingeladener Vortrag
- nein (24)
Black writing materials of different types and compositions have varied in use over time and different geographical regions. With this paper, we would like to contribute to their study by listing and reviewing recipes for black writing inks that were in circulation in the Carolingian Empire as well as by referencing the archaeometric analyses of the black inks used in the manuscripts. The studies presented here that involved the humanities and natural sciences provide new insights into how the scholars of the early Medieval Ages organized manuscripts.
The current state of preservation of the DSS results from the synergetic effect of various factors such as great age, post-discovery treatments, poor storage conditions, environmental influences and exhibitions. With rare exceptions, neither the initial state nor a list of the treatments performed on each DSS fragment is known. Reconstruction of the individual fragment history will have to rely upon advanced analytical techniques to identify the treatments and their effects.
Management of the scrolls may be divided roughly into three periods: a) the scholarly archiving period, from 1948 to the mid-1960s; b) first attempts at conservation, from the mid-1960s to late-1980s; c) Israel Antiquities Authority Scrolls Lab, from 1991 onwards.
Physico-chemical analyses of writing materials offer insight into various questions associated with historical, cultural, and conservational aspects of manuscript studies. The catalogue of questions that can be addressed with these methods includes authenticity, dating, the attribution of various parts of the text to different scribes and the relation between the primary and secondary texts. Similarly, preservation of the manuscripts requires knowledge of the composition of the original materials versus old repairs, identification of damage, as well as recognition of natural aging and degradation processes. The material sciences can contribute data about the chemical compositions of the writing materials, elucidation of the techniques of their production and the absolute age of organic components, as well as characterization of corrosion effects, evaluation of conservation treatment, and monitoring of the preservation state.
Ancient Inks
(2023)
In the last decade scientists and scholars have accumulated more knowledge on black ink used for writing in Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
Ready availability of non-destructive testing instruments employed in interdisciplinary projects on historic manuscripts have made it possible to determine the composition of ink and to compare it with the extant records.
Interest in the type of skin used in scriptural materials and preparation methods increased from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. This was due partly to the number of newly discovered fragments and to the invention of new instruments and scientific procedures to identify animal skins and produce qualitative means to demonstrate specific preparation reagents and techniques. The invention of various means of analyzing the DNA of organic materials brought about a revolution in archaeology and in conservation. Difficulties in overcoming contamination of archaeological samples resulted in a number of controversies but also produced advances and improvement in the techniques of ancient DNA analysis and interpretation of results.
In an interdisciplinary collaboration, restorers, art historians, and scientists examined Guilio Romano’s The Madonna with the Wash-Basin of 1525 (Dresden State Art Collections). Insights into the painting technique along with art historical comparisons provided the opportunity for a better understanding of the painting’s genesis, in particular concerning an early reworking of the background by the artist. A recovery and reconstruction of the earlier version of the background is now possible. The discovery of zinc in distinct passages of the painting, as well as the grey-black pigment stibnite and glass particles used as a supplement in paint layers are of special interest. The technological investigation initiated a discussion about the circumstances of the revision, as well as the painting’s relation to Vasari’s Lives of Artists.
Hundreds of papyrus rolls, carbonized during the 79CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius, were discovered in 1754 at Herculaneum. Sophisticated mechanical methods for unrolling the best-preserved scrolls have been applied, with varying success. However, such processes have been abandoned, to prevent risk from irremediable damage or loss and to preserve the integrity of the extremely fragile rolls. Following the development of X-ray based non-invasive techniques, attempts to virtually unroll the scrolls were made. The most common ink in Antiquity was carbon-based, and the main element of carbonized papyrus is carbon, making these investigations difficult. However, some attempts with synchrotron X-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT) were successful. Recently, the identification of antique inks containing metals raised hope that if some of the inks contain metal the rolls can be virtually unrolled using conventional CT- technique. We investigated the inks of a selection of partially unrolled fragments stored at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli with X-ray fluorescence in order to select the best candidates for tomography. Despite the many difficulties (analysis of several layers sticking together, letters barely visible, difficulty to separate contribution from the ink and from the papyrus, inhomogeneity of the support, fragility of the fragments…), encouraging results were found, with a number of inks from Greek fragments found to contain additions to the soot (Fe, Pb, Cu P).
The first manuscripts from the Qumran caves were found in 1947. Within the following 10 years, clandestine and legal excavations revealed some 900 highly fragmented manuscripts from the late Second Temple period. This collection is generally known as Scrolls of the Judea Desert or Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). For many years after their discovery, text analysis and fragmeents attribution were the main concern of the scholars dealing with the scrolls. The uncertain archaeological provenance of the larger part of the collection added an additional difficulty to the formidable task of sorting some 19000 fragments. After 60 years of scholar research the question of origin, archaeological provenance and correct attribution of the fragmenst are still hotly debated. To dtermine a possible contribution to the debate from the point of view of writing materials, we used otpical and electron microscopy, various X-ray based techniques as well as vibratiional sprectroscopy. We validated our approach with SY - based studies using the advantages of the synchroton radiation source with respect to the benchtop devices. Our laboratory studies showed that often production and storage locality could be distinguished thenks to the specific residues ("fingerprint") they left on the material. Moreover, we have diescovered that diferrent parchment production processses coexisted in the antiquity, and the resulting writing materials can readily be distinguished.
Typology of Inks
Archives and museums around the world contain a vast number of manuscripts that were written in different inks: carbon inks, plant inks, iron-gall inks and mixed inks. Yet most archaeometric studies of manuscripts focus on the palette of pigments found in illuminated manuscripts whereas identification of the inks is still largely based on cultural-historical studies and visual inspections. One of the reasons of this disproportion in the studies can be explained by the properties of Raman spectroscopy, the technique of choice for identification of pigments. In contrast, this technique is only partially viable when dealing with organic colourants. Brown and Clark discuss these difficulties and the uncertainties of identification of iron-gall inks by Raman spectroscopy in their pioneering work on early medieval Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (K. Brown and R. Clark 2004). To facilitate instrumental analysis of inks, we have developed a protocol that starts with the identification of the inks type (Rabin et al. 2012) which doesn’t require complicated instrumentation and can be carried out by paleographers and codicologists.
Three typological ink classes
The black writing materials used in manuscript production in Antiquity und Middle Ages can be sorted in three typologically different ink classes: soot, plant and iron-gall. Soot ink is a fine dispersion of carbon pigments in a water soluble binding agent; plant-based ink consists of a solution of the tannins extracted from gallnuts or tree bark; iron-gall ink, is produced by mixing a soluble compound of iron (II) with gallic or tannic acid extracted from gallnuts or tree bark. Therefore, iron-gall ink presents a boundary case between solution and dispersion ink, in which a water-soluble preliminary stage oxidizes and evolves into a black, insoluble precipitate similar to the carbon pigments when the writing is exposed to air (Krekel 1999). The additional category of mixed inks, i.e. inks produced by addition of various metals to the soot inks or intentional mixing of iron-gall and soot - based inks started attracting scholarly attention only recently because their significance was established only a short while ago (Brun et al. 2016, Colini 2018, Nehring et al. 2021). We suggest that plant and mixed inks build a bridge from the carbon ink of Antiquity to the properly formulated iron-gall ink that became a standard black ink from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century when it gave way to modern inks.
Tuschenanalyse im P 11702
(2021)
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.
While studying the socio-geographic history of inks, division 4.5 of the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und Prüfung) together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg has developed a protocol for ink analysis.
It consists of a primary screening to determine the type of the ink, and a subsequent in-depth analysis using several spectroscopic techniques. The XRF elemental analysis aims primarily at identifying and characterizing metallic components of inks. Besides the instrumental methods, the paper presents an overview of historic inks in the period of transition from carbon inks of the Antiquity to iron-gall inks commonly used in the Middle Ages.
The Scythica Vindobonensia, the new fragments on Gothic incursions into Roman provinces in the Balkans in the middle of the third century AD that were revealed some years ago in a Greek palimpsest at the Austrian National Library in Vienna (ÖNB), are commonly considered as one of the most important additions of the last decades to the corpus of texts from classical Antiquity. Tere is a high degree of confdence among scholars in supposing that the fragments come from the lost work Scythica written in Greek by the third-century historian P. Herennius Dexippus (Δέξιππος) of Athens. The new fragments have hence also been called Dexippus Vindobonensis. In his Scythica, Dexippus recorded wars of the Romans with the Goths (and other tribes) whom he called Scythians.
The work had been hitherto known only from excerpts and quotes by later authors. Eight pages of a Byzantine manuscript copy of the ancient text have survived hidden underneath the visible surface of the last four parchment folios of the Vienna manuscript Historicus graecus 73, f. 192r -195v4. The copy is written in a Greek calligraphic minuscule which has been estimated by palaeographers to be of the middle or the second half of the eleventh century. In the thirteenth century, the text (on each of the eight pages arranged in one column, with 30 lines per page) was washed of the parchment and the valuable material made from animal skin was re-used for Christian texts. The new writing largely covered the faded remnants of the original text. It thus became hidden from the human eye for more than seven hundred years. Its discovery by Jana Grusková, a classical philologist specialized in the transmission of Greek texts, resulted from a systematic review of all Greek palimpsests kept at the Austrian National Library in Vienna at the beginning of the twenty-first century and a detailed examination of the four folios in 2007-20097.
The scribe of ‘Erfurt 7’, a thirteenth-century Torah scroll now kept in Berlin, initially left blank spaces for the divine appellations Elohim ( אלהים ) and YHWH Elohim ( ,(יהוה אלהים which were filled in during a second stage of writing. The appearance of the ink employed to write the appellations was significantly darker than that of the surrounding ink.
X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) has shown that the light and dark brown inks had similar elemental compositions, but contained different ratios of iron to potassium, which could be explained by the use of different batches of ink.
According to some medieval sources, the divine appellations were sometimes filled in during a second stage of writing in the presence of ten men from the Jewish community. In Erfurt 7, the two-stage procedure was only performed in the first 1.5 columns of the original sheets, suggesting it may have been part of a public ceremony inaugurating the writing of the divine names in the scroll. Erfurt 7 emerges from this study not only as a ritual object used for liturgy, but as a rallying point for the Jews of Erfurt to come together as a community to express their reverence for the written form of God’s name. The divine name YHWH ( יהוה ) was written in a smaller script than the surrounding text on three replacement sheets using the same two-stage procedure. The ink used on the replacement sheets contained zinc, which is characteristic of other Erfurt manuscripts as well. This suggests that Erfurt was the place where the scroll was used, cherished and eventually repaired.
Recent research has suggested that some of the inks used in Herculaneum papyri do not consist of pure carbon. Starting from this finding, in June 2018 a preliminary campaign of analysis by means of X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) of external portions removed mechanically from their original rolls in the eighteenth century (the so-called scorze) took place at the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. Also in this case, the aim of the survey was to investigate the ink composition in order to detect possible traces of metal. This article sums up the results of this survey.
An interdisciplinary approach to the study of manuscript traditions is here applied to the analysis of the leaves from the White Monastery, one of the greatest centres of literary production in Late Antique Egypt. In the framework of the ‘PAThs’ project, archaeometric analyses complement the information pieced together by a range of disciplines in the field of humanities. The use of different complementary analytical techniques provides information on the type of ink used and its elemental composition, unveiling interesting details regarding the materials and methodology of manufacturing of writing media. Moreover, this contribution takes a step forward and discusses the possible existence of a regional arrangement in the elemental composition revealed in the inks studied.
While studying the socio-geographic history of inks, division 4.5 (Analysis of cultural artefacts and assets) of the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) in Berlin together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg has developed a protocol for ink analysis. It consists of a primary screening to determine the type of the ink, and a subsequent in-depth analysis using several spectroscopic techniques.
Using this protocol, scientists can assist scholars in addressing a rather broad range of historical questions that cannot be answered unequivocally through scholarly research alone. Among these are investigations on collaboration between scribes and scriptoria, on the usage and annotation of manuscripts and on their path through time and space in general. This research can thus help to reconstruct the circumstances of the production of written heritage as well as their history and transmission.
To facilitate the dialogue between the scholars and the scientists a simple optical tool was developed to allow the scholars to perform preliminary ink analysis required for formulation of the question that in turn can be answered by scientific in-depth investigations. In this paper, ink types and their identification method is accompanied by examples of the recent work conducted on parchment manuscripts in the Austrian National Library.
In the recent years multispectral imaging and X-ray Fluorescence element mapping have established themselves as a well working two step approach, when dealing with faded, erased or overwritten text in iron gall ink. During the last years a lot was done to improve the mere technical side of the techniques. Especially in the case of XRF mapping experiments the acquisition speed needed to be increased to allow mapping in the high resolution demanded by the challenges at hand. High resolution in moderate times can now be achieved, but with the price of proportionally increased amount of data that needs to be processed ideally in parallel to the measurement. The classical approach in XRF spectroscopy of elemental fitting of the spectral data does not even come close to fulfill any on the fly processing time constraints and will consume too much processing time in the foreseeable future. In this paper we will discuss the applicability of modern statistical data processing methods to XRF mapping of iron gall ink palimpsests. We will present a comparison of a new approach based on principle and independent component analysis (PCA and ICA) and the standard element mapping method. We will show that a reduction in processing time of almost two orders of magnitude can easily be achieved.
While studying the history of inks, division 4.5 of the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und Prüfung) together with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg has developed a protocol for ink analysis. It consists of a primary screening to determine the type of the ink, and a subsequent in-depth analysis using several spectroscopic techniques. One of them, X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) aims primarily at establishing the fingerprints of inks containing metals, making it possible to distinguish among different inks.
Our research aims primarily at recreating a socio-geographic history of inks, parchment, and papyrus and includes the comparative analysis of the writing materials of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ink and papyrus in Ancient and Hellenistic Egypt, and inks in documents from various contemporary medieval communities in Fustat (first nucleus of Cairo) as well as other medieval Jewish and Armenian communities.
The presentation shows the panorama of historic inks and our attempt to follow up the transition of the inks from those based on soot to the iron-gall inks commonly used in the Middle Age.
Our study is dedicated to non-destructive characterization of the support and the inks of the DSS.
To that aim we use micro-XRF, 3D- SY-XRF, different IR methods including synchrotron radiation based reflectance spectroscopy, optical and electron microscopy.
The lecture discusses advantages and the shortcomings of the non-destructive testing approach.