mixed inks

Ingredients

carbon, soot, polyphenols, vegetal extracts, oak galls

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

These mixed inks are obtained by blending carbon (soot or charcoal) with polyphenols extracted from vegetal matter, such as oak galls (p. 5). The resulting ink is less opaque in the infrared spectrum (above 1510 nm) than pure carbon ink. In the case of P.Oxy.1869 and P.Oxy.4381 (ink 1), XRF revealed a lack of iron, suggesting these were carbon-plant mixtures rather than carbon-iron-gall mixtures (p. 5, 7).

Evidence

"the inks on P.Oxy.1869, 2665, 3637, and 4381 (ink 1) showed a change in opacity. This indicates that soot or charcoal was initially combined with other ingredients, thus resulting in the so-called mixed inks."

Remarks

In P.Oxy. 4381 (proceedings from the court of Alexandria), mixed ink was used for the Latin script in the first three lines to visually highlight it from the Greek text, which was written in carbon ink (p. 7). This suggests established scribal traditions at the court of Alexandria for using material differences in ink to denote different sections of a document (p. 8, 9).