Conserving, analysing and studying the ‘Hay cookbook’: Revelations from ancient ‘magical’ texts on leather
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Creator
Wills, Barbara
Zellmann-Rohrer, Michael
Skinner, Lucy
O'Connell, Elisabeth R.
Stacey, Rebecca
()
Giles, David
2021
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Abstract
Seven early medieval leather documents were conserved and studied as part of a small British Museum Research project. Thought to be from the Theban Necropolis (Upper Egypt) and dating to c. 740-810AD, they are written in Coptic. The largest extant manuscript is known today as the ‘Hay Cookbook’, which, together with associated texts, contains templates for spells with a variety of requests. The leather had clearly further degraded since infrared photography in the 1930s: some areas had darkened, breaks and cracks had opened up and pieces had detached. Old restoration had placed some fragments of text in the wrong position. Old paper repair tabs were large, disfiguring and sometimes damaging. The conservation process allowed gentle cleaning, reversal of damaging historical treatments, re-positioning and near-invisible-joining of fragments. The process of dismounting and conservation offered the opportunity for closer examination, multi-spectral imaging and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). Further scientific analysis was aimed at identifying the animal species, tanning agent and to confirm the type of ink. Finally, the documents were re-mounted. The project demonstrated the benefits of collaboration between specialists: curator, conservator, scientist and mounter.