2023-05-04 13:14:32
Even the ancient scribes who practiced their art on the Herculaneum papyri used different types of grids to delimit the writing surface. The first scientific confirmation of this custom, news of which the classical authors had handed down to us, is due to the results of the working group of the ‘Erc Advanced Grant 885222-GreekSchools’ project, coordinated by Professor Graziano Ranocchia of the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics of the University of Pisa, and dedicated to the analysis with advanced techniques of the carbonised papyri of Herculaneum, kept in the National Library ‘Vittorio Emanuele III’ of Naples. The study that led to this important discovery is presented in the journal “Scientific Reports”, published by “Nature portfolio”.
The publication, the result of the collaboration of physicists, chemists and papyrologists, has highlighted for the first time the presence of various types of grids in ancient Greek book scrolls. It was already known from the classical authors that the ancient scribes used for this purpose a ruler and a lead washer, which when rubbed on the surface of the papyrus left a thin, barely visible trace, which was used to trace the boundaries of the writing mirror. Never before had traces of it been evinced in the numerous papyri that have come down to us from antiquity, to the point that modern scholars have racked their brains for decades about the meaning of these testimonies.
The scanning X-ray macro-fluorescence experiments performed on the Herculaneum papyri of the National Library of Naples by the team of Dr. Paolo Romano, of the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the Cnr (Cnr-Ispc) of Catania, and of the National Laboratories of the Sud of the Infn National Institute of Nuclear Physics have provided experimental proof of the correctness of this information. Thanks to the portable instrumentation developed in Cnr-Ispc with the ‘Mur Pon Ir Shine’ project, different types of grids were revealed for the first time, consisting of lead lines arranged orthogonally with the clear aim of delimiting inter-column spaces, columns, inter-columns and single lines of writing.
“This is a sensational discovery for papyrology – says Professor Graziano Ranocchia – now we have confirmation of what we could only imagine before. Furthermore, it has finally been demonstrated that the systematic inclination of the columns of writing in literary scrolls, the so-called Maas Law, was an intentional aesthetic fact of the ancient scribes, and not a sign of graphic inaccuracy, as has been assumed by some”.
“The development of non-invasive instruments and methods for in situ analysis is bringing important advances in the diagnostics of cultural heritage, – continues Dr. Costanza Miliani, director of the Cnr-Ispc – in particular the Xrf scanner developed by Ispc-Cnr for the Molab access platform of the E-Rihs research infrastructure allows revealing valuable information on the chemical composition and distribution of elements thanks to unparalleled sensitivity and spatial resolution, as for the ultra-traces of residual lead of the writing lines of the papyri of Herculaneum”.
Great satisfaction was also expressed by the director of the National Library of Naples, Dr. Maria Iannotti, who since the beginning of her mandate has strongly believed in the need to forge collaborations with universities and research institutions for the enhancement of the huge heritage of the Institute led by her, which includes, in addition to the papyri, an important collection of ancient manuscripts and incunabula and, among others, important autographs by Giacomo Leopardi and Benedetto Croce: “This is a new beginning for the studies concerning our collections and a model of institutional cooperation to be extended to other cases of the same kind. In my opinion, conservation and research must go hand in hand and must communicate with each other for the benefit of both”.
This collaboration, which for the first time sees the National Library of Naples as co-beneficiary of a project financed by the European Commission, is also strengthened by the recent signing of special agreements with both the Cnr-Ispc and the University of Pisa.
“Since the Department I headed decided to host the ‘GreekSchools’ project – concludes the director of the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, Professor Roberta Ferrari – the opportunities for institutional collaboration and public visibility of our research activities have significantly increased, also with the attraction of other funded projects and the recent important ministerial recognition of the Department of Excellence 2023-2027, which with the ‘Cecil’ project proposes itself as a vanguard in the fight against linguistic impoverishment”.
(by Paolo Martini)
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