This stalk was composed of a green outer rind and inner, white, spongy pith. In ancient times, papyrus often grew to heights of about 15 ft, had a “mop-shaped” umbel head, and developed a stout, triangular stem about 3½ to 5 in in thickness. In this scientific name, hadidii represents the subspecies that was the ancient Egyptian papyrus plant. Top image: A papyrus from the Tebtunis library.In today’s taxonomy, Cyperus papyrus hadidii is the scientific name for the ancient Egyptian papyrus. et al, Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 15346 (2017). Further understanding the nature of the inks used in Ancient Egypt is important, since, on the basis of the results, we can develop new and better methods of conservation that will ensure the longevity of these unique and fragile papyri”, concludes Thomas Christiansen.Ĭhristiansen, T. “This is the first time that copper has been detected in black inks from such an early period.

The results will, however, help define future strategies of conservation. “We don´t know why there are so many variations of copper”, says Christiansen, “but it could be because papyrus used to be humidified to study it, and that made the copper change its chemical state, or just because the environment has made it evolve over the centuries”. The team had hoped to find elements in their experiment to show differences between ink formulae from the two locations at two times in history, but unfortunately none of the four inks studied are completely identical and the micro XANES analysis on copper showed variations even within a single letter. The team when they came to ID21 at the ESRF, back in April 2016. These results suggest that the source of the copper compounds found in the black inks and along the fibrous structure are by-products of metallurgy, glaze and glass production, which provided the raw material (soot) for “refined” carbon inks in the ancient Mediterranean. Marine Cotte, in charge of ID21, explains that “there is a strong presence of copper in all the samples that we see clearly in the micro XRF maps”.

Despite their distance in time, space, and social context, the researchers were surprised to find that the black inks of Pathyris and Tebtunis revealed similar traits. In combination to laboratory techniques, they came to the ID21 beamline, at the European Synchrotron, Grenoble, to analyse the composition of the papyrus and the ink, from the millimetre to the micron scale with micro XRF and micro XANES. This is why we came to the ESRF”.Ī piece of papyrus (left) and the X-ray fluorescence image of the same piece. Thomas Christiansen, Egyptologist and corresponding author, explains that “the chemistry of the black inks used in the ancient world has been only scantily studied so far, leaving gaps in our knowledge of one of the fundamental inventions in the history of civilization. With these questions, the international team of researchers came to the ESRF’s ID21 beamline looking for answers. Did they use the same formula in ink despite the different time and place? Could the ink help scientists match the fragments together in order to be able to read complete manuscripts? Could they even create a cartography of ink recipes? The ink of these manuscripts could help scientists to piece together information about ancient times. The Tebtunis temple library contains papyri fragments from the first two centuries AD. Around 600km to the north, the ancient town of Tebtunis houses the only large scale institutional library known to have survived from ancient Egypt.

During a civil war in 88 BC Pathyris was destroyed, but Horus’ private correspondence was preserved in a jar, albeit in pieces. Horus was an Egyptian soldier stationed in the military camp of Pathyris, around 30 km south of Luxor, during the 1 st century BC.

Papyrus ancient egypt