Re: orion Red ink

[Stephen Goranson <goranson@duke.edu>]

David Crowder wrore:
>   1. There are four scrolls, three of them biblical, with red ink that has
>been identified as mercury sulfide or cinnabar.  Cinnabar has been found,
>according to encyclopedias and other sources, in California, Peru, China
>and the Trieste area.  Has a Middle East source ever been located?
[....]

The previously-mentioned article, Y. Nir-El and M. Broshi, "The Red Ink of
the Dead Sea Scrolls," Archaeometry 38 (1996) 97-102, discusses Roman trade
of cinnabar on page 101. It mentions the importance of a mine in Spain,
which supplied "almost the entire Roman inventory" and the high quality of
a source in the region of Ephesus, citing Vitruvius, De Architectura VII,
8-9 and Pliny, Nat.Hist., XXXIII, 36-41 (correcting a typo).
	David, do you or Neil Altman still argue that red ink indicates
that the Qumran manuscripts are medieval?

sincerely,
Stephen Goranson
goranson@duke.edu

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