Conserving, analysing and studying the ‘Hay cookbook’: Revelations from ancient ‘magical’ texts on leather
Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Wills, Barbara
Zellmann-Rohrer, Michael
Skinner, Lucy
O'Connell, Elisabeth R.
Stacey, Rebecca
Giles, David
Date published
2021
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.
Editor
Giles, Matthew
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
The Arnamagnà¦an Commission | |
Journal title
Care and conservation of manuscripts. Proceedings of the seventeenth international seminar held at the University of Copenhagen 11th–13th April 2018
Volume
17
Publisher
Museum Tusculanum Press
Place of publication
Copenhagen
ISSN
1602-1339
Keywords