Speaker
Description
For hundreds of years paper has been the main material for recording cultural achievements around the world. Paper is mostly made up of cellulose with small amounts of organic and inorganic additives, which allow its identification and characterisation and may also contribute to its degradation. Prior to 1850 AD, paper was made entirely from rags, using hemp, flax and cotton fibres. At around 11th century, carbon inks as well as iron gall inks were popular. During that era, ink was also made from branches of hawthorn which were cut in the spring and left to dry. Then the bark from the branches would be peeled off and left to soak in water for eight days. That water would be boiled until it is thick and black but while boiling, wine would be added to it. That thick and black liquid would be poured into bags and left in the sun to dry. When it is dried, wine (again) and iron salt would be mixed with it over fire. The resulting mixture would be ink ready to use. The aim of this project was to study paper and ink components of a number of unique ancient manuscripts (about 300 unique manuscripts, most of them over 200 years old) by Infrared Spectroscopy technique. No previous research has been done on these manuscripts. We had very successful beamtimes at Elettra SISSI-Mat Beamline (this project was supposed to be carried out at ALBA; MIRAS beamline (accepted proposal number 2021095394), but the proposal could not be allocated due to some operational reasons. It will hopefully be resubmitted for the current call). Experimental results lead us to a roadmap to understanding the process of writing history on the Silk Road. Due to the uniqueness of the manuscripts and in order to complete the project and to produce standard charts for the components of paper and ink (separately) used over hundreds of years, a long-term project is required. Preliminary results of FTIR spectroscopy studies on the historical manuscripts showed that the range of colours applied in illustrated margins in one of the manuscripts (marriage certificate) consists of red, pink, orange, dark (strong) and light blue, dark (strong) and light green, black, white, gold and silver. In addition, ultramarine, Verdigris (copper acetate), lead white (lead carbonate) and ochre (Iron oxide) for blue, green, white and orange could be distinguish respectively. The specific signal from Prussian blue (Iron blue) was identified in the blue ink of the texts in this document. Since gold, silver and red colours (red and pink) have no specific signals related to their pigments, it needs to analyse their elements by other non-destructive methods such as XRF (XRF test scans at the ICTP-XRF laboratory, Trieste provided very interesting results (Figure 3)). It should be mentioned that the peaks of proteins compound in the gold and silver colour spectrum could be related to its binder which is usually from animal glue. It should be mentioned that the manuscripts of the collection preserved in the same environmental conditions for many years. However, only some of them were attacked by pests such as "Silver fish" so the interesting question to be answered here is whether some inhibitor agents prevented insects to damage other documents.