The mysterious scribbles found in a 1,300-year-old book – 03/30/2023 – Science

About 1,300 years ago, a woman took a precious book and scribbled letters and designs in the margins.

She didn’t use ink—she just scratched the paper—and the scribbles were barely visible to the naked eye. No one knew they were there until last year.

The book is a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, part of the New Testament, dating from the 8th century. It is now housed in the Bodleian Library at the British University of Oxford.

Researchers had known for some time that the religious text was likely owned by a woman, but they weren’t sure who it was.

Until, in 2022, researcher Jessica Hodgkinson, from the University of Leicester, also in the United Kingdom, decided to take a closer look and was surprised to discover a hidden squiggle on page 18, exactly below the Latin text.

The strokes have been digitally highlighted and you can now see the letters clearly: “EaDBURG BIREð CǷ…N”.

unclear meaning

The last word is incomplete. And further analysis revealed that the book was deliberately scratched with some blunt object for four more pages.

What could be the meaning?

Hodgkinson interpreted the first symbol as a cross, followed by “Eadburg”—almost certainly the name of the owner of the book.

Not much is known about her, but Hodgkinson and his team suspect that Eadburg was a nun — the abbess of a religious community in Minster-in-Thanet — a village in the county of Kent, England.

The following lyrics are a little more cryptic. Perhaps they could mean “is in the cwærtern”—”prison” in Old English.

The Latin passage above the scribbles describes the imprisonment of the apostles, and Eadburg may have drawn a parallel with his own situation.

The most curious thing is that Hodgkinson and his colleagues found drawings of people on other pages.

On one bank, a square figure with arms outstretched—a nun, perhaps? In another, a person reaching out their hand against the face of a sad companion. Did she not want to hear what the other person was saying?

Anyway, the meaning of the drawings is a mystery. And the scribbles in the margins of Eadburg’s book aren’t the only writings and drawings discovered at Oxford in recent months.

Hodgkinson was able to find the Eadburg prints thanks to new imaging technology at the Bodleian Library, which can map the physical texture and contours of pages in books and manuscripts or the surface of other historic objects, such as printing plates.

This detailed mapping reveals marks that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye, or even with ordinary cameras.

“The surface carries an immense amount of information,” explains Adam Lowe, founder of the Factum Foundation in Madrid, Spain — the non-profit organization that produced the technology for the Oxford library as part of the Archiox project. for Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage at Oxford).

Lowe states that “the more you can make visible, the more truly impressive discoveries will emerge”.

Researchers on the Archiox project use two devices to create digital representations of pages and objects. One of them is called “Selene”. It has four cameras capable of capturing surface relief differences of up to 25 micrometers (0.025 mm).

The other is “Lucida”, which emits lasers and has two tiny cameras to create 3D scans.

“Anything can be measured. It’s not just an imaging tool, it’s also a measuring instrument. And that makes it all the more fascinating,” says John Barrett, photographer at the Bodleian Library and technical lead on the Archiox project.

Technology is being used in the basement of the Bodleian Library to create digital representations of various items in its collection. And Eadburg’s book wasn’t the only centuries-old document to reveal hidden squiggles.

In a 9th-century manuscript, Archiox project researchers mapped a hunting scene scratched onto its surface.

And, below the animals, the word “RODA” was found, probably related to the owner of the book. Barrett claims that “this has never been observed”.

Why would people scratch their names into books and add barely visible drawings like these? Well, as for the names, it might just have been to show who owned the work, without scribbling down precious religious text.

“These manuscripts were considered sacred. And even if you wanted to leave your mark on them, you wouldn’t want to be too obvious,” explains Barrett.

And as for the figures, “I don’t think they were necessarily scribbled on purpose,” he says. “Many times these notes, and certainly others that I recorded more recently, were undoubtedly related to the text itself.”

copper plates

Some of the first objects from the Bodleian Library collection to be examined for the Archiox project were the 200 to 300 year old copper printing plates that form the so-called Rawlinson collection. They were selected by Alexandra Franklin, coordinator of the Center for Book Studies, and Chiara Betti, PhD student at the University of London.

An example of engraving that was previously hidden and revealed by Archiox technology is that of a plaque that, on the front, includes the portrait of an influential French cardinal. But when the researchers looked at the back of the illustration, there appeared to be a barely-there musical score.

Technology has made it possible to observe banknotes with complete clarity. “Probably, [a melodia] was inspired by Psalm 9, for the words [em inglês] seem to fit together,” says Barrett.

In Portuguese, Psalm 9 of the Bible begins with these words: “I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. I will be glad and exult in you; at your name, O Most High , I will sing praises.”

But why would anyone do that?

“The material [cobre] it was very valuable,” explains Barrett. “It could have been reused, or it could simply have been an opportunity for the artist or recorder to practice.”

But he points out that there is no known impression of that music made from the plaque. So his discovery added a new item to the historical record.

“It was not recorded in the plate’s cataloging reference. These are completely new discoveries that are being made”, says Barrett.

“I would say that probably one third of the plates analyzed for Archiox also had something on the back. Often, the designs are very beautiful, strange or mysterious”, according to the researcher.

maps and artists

The Archiox project’s technology also revealed new insights into the techniques for creating the objects. This was the case with a historically important map.

“It’s the oldest recognizable map of the British Isles, dating back to the 14th century,” says Barrett.

Scanning of the surface by the Archiox project team revealed that “it is absolutely riddled with pinholes, over 2,000 of them… spots such as cathedrals, rivers and more have been pinned or marked,” according to Barrett.

This indicates that the map has been copied, as map makers would have used pins to aid reproduction. They would have deposited the original map over the replica, using sharp objects to mark important locations on the material below the map.

“You can imagine that this original map would probably have been used to generate other maps, but it’s actually the other way around,” he says.

Surface mapping revealed that “the pinholes don’t completely pierce the map. So we can deduce that this map was actually copied from a matrix: a previous map.”

And the Archiox project’s technology is also helping to reveal new indications of the artistic talent that led to the creation of the works.

When researchers from the Archiox project analyzed the surface of a Japanese woodblock print, they realized that the artist had added textures that he would have known would be invisible to the human eye.

When we look at the figure’s face and the bow around the head, both printed in the same color, the technology allows us to see the difference in texture.

“You wonder why on earth the printer went to the trouble of doing this really amazing carving and engraving job if it can’t be watched,” asks Barrett.

Is it to change the way light is reflected on the finished print? Perhaps. But the researcher has another opinion.

“I think the answer is that it was an act of love. These things were done as perfectly as possible. It brings a new perspective on the techniques involved in their production that you really didn’t have before, just shooting with conventional technology.”

Lowe suggests that with this new approach, there could be thousands of new discoveries waiting to be found, hidden in plain sight in libraries and art galleries.

“People are beginning to realize that ‘landmark information’ is transforming our knowledge,” he explains. “There must be objects in libraries around the world that can benefit from this technology… it’s a matter of treating material objects as evidence.”

“There are many things we know, but there are also many more things that can be discovered. And I think this is an incredibly stimulating and inspiring thought,” he concludes.

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Richard Fisher is a senior journalist at BBC Future.

Reporter Hannah Fisher recently presented research from the Archiox project on the BBC World Service’s Digital Planet radio programme. listen to the episode (in English – the report starts at minute 11:20) on the website BBC Sounds.

read the original version of this report (in English) on the website BBC Future.