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Investigation of physical properties and chemical composition of writing materials generates important data that we add to the results of the codicological analysis of the manuscripts. In its individual materiality, each manuscript is the result of a wide variety of influences. The “life” of a manuscript starts with its production that includes preparation of the writing surfaces and inks; it is followed by the use and storage, and finally characterized by treatment during restoration. Using instrumental analysis we record the characteristics that still exist. Combining our data with those obtained from the palaeographical and codicological analysis produces a new powerful tool for reconstruction of the history of a manuscript.
The course presents panorama of historic writing inks, their use the methods of their identification. First, we discuss the possible types of the inks and show how one can determine these types using very simple instrumentation.
The change of the inks from those based on soot to the iron-gall inks commonly used in the Middle Age constitutes the second half of the course.
The Cairo Geniza is an “archive” discovered in the 19th century in Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, a district in Old Cairo (Egypt), located south of the center of modern Cairo. The giant collection of mostly Jewish documents that vary in genres, languages and writing supports contains a large number of early medieval Hebrew manuscripts, mostly in fragmentary form. The larger part of the Cairo Geniza is stored today in the Cambridge University Library.
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.
My work addresses the ink composition in the documents attributed to the members of these communities. For the determination of the inks type and composition I employ reflectography and µ-XRF spectrometry, respectively. The preliminary typological studies indicate that iron-gall inks were found predominantly in the manuscripts attributed to the Palestinian community.