Ancient Roman scribes used metallic ink centuries earlier than expected (2024)

Technique reveals use of lead ink instead of carbon soot in papyri buried by Vesuvius’s eruption in A.D. 79

March 28, 2016| A version of this story appeared inVolume 94, Issue 13

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Credit: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA

Ancient Roman scribes used lead (green) ink and silicon-based mineral (purple) that forms lines naturally in papyrus to write boldly and evenly.

Credit: Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA

Ancient Roman scribes used lead (green) ink and silicon-based mineral (purple) that forms lines naturally in papyrus to write boldly and evenly.

Scribes in ancient Rome were using lead ink four centuries earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of papyri from Herculaneum, a city destroyed, like Pompeii, by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. A team of scientists led by Vito Mocella of Italy’s National Research Council for Microelectronics & Microsystems in Naples used micro X-ray fluorescence and diffraction to identify lead in the ink on two documents buried in the eruption (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 2016, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1519958113). Researchers previously placed the adoption of metallic inks in the A.D. 5th century and believed carbon-based soot ink was the go-to writing medium before that time. This adjustment to the onset of metallic ink use is important because it could improve the interpretation of archaeological artifacts. For example, when archaeologists have found metal residues in pots buried by Vesuvius’s A.D. 79 ash, they’ve assumed the pot held cosmetics but not ink, the authors note. In addition, the team also discovered that a silicon mineral called cristobalite, which forms natural regular lines in the papyrus plant, was used by scribes to keep their writing straight and evenly spaced.

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