Traces of Ink

Lucia Raggetti is an Assistant Professor for the History of Ancient Sciences at the University of Bologna. After receiving her PhD in Arabo-Islamic studies in Naples, she held a DAAD Fellowship in Hamburg and then worked as research assistant at the Freie Unversität Berlin, in the research group on Wissensgeschichte (History of Knowledge). Her main research interests are Arabic philology and the history of natural sciences and medicine in the Arabo-Islamic milieu, on which she has published a variety of articles. She is author of ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī’s Book on the Useful Properties of Animal Parts: Edition, Translation and Study of a Fluid Tradition (de Gruyter, 2018).

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

 Lucia Raggetti



1 WoW! Writing on Wax in Ancient Mesopotamia and Today: Questions and Results from an Interdisciplinary Project

 Katja Weirauch and Michele Cammarosano



2 Written in Blood? Decoding Some Red Inks of the Greek Magical Papyri

 Miriam Blanco Cesteros



3 Ink in Herculaneum: A Survey of Recent Perspectives

 Vincenzo Damiani



4 Material Studies of Historic Inks: Transition from Carbon to Iron-Gall Inks

 Ira Rabin



5 ‘Alchemical’ Inks in the Syriac Tradition

 Matteo Martelli



6 The Literary Dimension and Life of Arabic Treatises on Ink Making

 Sara Fani



7 “I tried it and it is really good” Replicating Recipes of Arabic Black Inks

 Claudia Colini



8 Ordinary Inks and Incredible Tricks in al-ʿIrāqī’s ʿUyūn al-ḥaqāʾiq

 Lucia Raggetti



Index of Manuscripts

Index of Authors

Index of Sources

Index of Technical Terms