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orion Red, green, blue inks
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On April 27, Christian Brady wrote:
>You have mentioned the blue and green ink before. I know of _no_ texts
>which have blue or green ink. Can you give us the numbers of the
>scrolls/frgs. which you claim have this ink?
Discoveries in the Judean Desert: 12. Qumran Cave 4: VII Genesis to
Numbers (1994)
Plate XLIX
Fragments 60, 67 and 71 appear to be in green/blue ink
Other fragments are with red or black ink
>(And is it possible that what you are seeing is oxidation of one or
more of
>the elements which make up the ink?)
To be honest, I haven't seen these in color, so I can't say. Neil
Altman and a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania museum library
certainly didn't think so. If the red is mercury sulfide, would it break
down into these colors? Also, it seems the writers of the report in
Archaeometry would have said something about it. That report baited Altman
with the reference to different colored inks, green and blue, I believe,
and sent him to DJD looking. But the Archaeometry report with blithely on,
making no mention of oxidation or oxidized cinnabar.
Perhaps the dreary Essenes were more colorful and creative than we give
them credit for. And perhaps the colorbook religious texts got so out of
hand that it led to the later rabbinical rules to keep biblical texts in
black and white just about the time that everyone else was beginning to
enjoy color. <g>
David Crowder
El Paso