This poster was presented in: International Conference on Innovation in Art Research and Technology – InArt 2024

Abstract

An important corpus of administrative texts from early Islamic Egypt is the Qurra dossier, which contains letters sent by Qurra b. Sharik (709-14 C-E), the governor of Egypt, to his pagarachs (heads of districts), mostly Basilios, the pagarach of Aphorodito. These letters were written in both Greek and Arabic, following a similar structural construct. The Qurra dossier also includes bilingual texts, wherein the same texts are recorded twice in the two languages on the same piece of papyrus. Most of these letters concern public law, including tax collection, and provide information about early Islamic administrative practices in multilingual Egypt (Richter 2016; Bosworth 2012). The papyri forming the Qurra dossier are now preserved among various libraries and institutes worldwide. While a majority of these texts have been carefully studied by manuscript scholars in recent years, these papyri have never been investigated from the perspective of material analysis. With multilingual documentary texts likely originating from the same place, these documents can provide us with insights into scribal practices in early Islamic Egypt, specifically at the chancellery of Qurra b. Sharik. In this study, we carried out material analysis of Qurra papyri preserved at the Institut de Papyrologie de la Sorbonne. Two Arabic, three Greek, and one bilingual papyri from the Qurra dossier were investigated using equipment from the CSMC mobile lab. The analytical protocol developed by the Centre for Study of Manuscript Culture (CSMC), Universität Hamburg and Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) for the study of inks in written artefacts was followed for the investigation of the fragments (Rabin et al. 2012; Colini et al. 2021). This includes an initial screening using a digital microscope (DinoLite AD4113T-I2V) under ultraviolet (395 nm), near infrared (940 nm) and visible (white) light source to discriminate between the ink types, followed by Infrared Reflectography using APOLLO Infrared Reflectography Imaging System (IRR) from OPUS instruments in combination with a Long Wave Pass Filter (LWP1510, range 1510–1700 nm) to confirm the presence of carbon. This was followed by elemental analysis of inks and supports using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, carried out using a Bruker Crono XRF spectrometer. The results indicated the use of carbon-based inks for writing in all six papyri. However, two different inks were used for penning the bilingual document: the Arabic sections were written using a carbon ink containing copper, while the Greek sections were penned using pure carbon inks. Another Greek text seems to have been written with a carbon-iron gall mixed ink. However, no distinct pattern could be deciphered with the limited number of fragments analysed. These results are part of a broader project on the use of inks and writing support on documents from the early Islamic centuries, including other papyri fragments from the Qurra dossier, carried out at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures.

The research for this project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany ́s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 'Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures', project no.390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.