Ancient Egyptians used black ink for writing the main body of text, while red ink was often used to highlight headings, instructions, or keywords. Research into the composition of ink has transformed ideas around Ancient Egyptian writing practices.
For quite a long time writing materials were a very expensive thing. It is not surprising that Mediaeval scholars were looking for some ways to cut the costs or recycle the materials. That’s how palimpsests were introduced. Often the old not-so-important texts were scraped or washed off from the leather (or papyrus) pages to allow for the new texts to be written over. This time the unimportant text of the medical recipe book attributed to Hippocrates was replaced by a layer of Bible text known as the “Sinaitic manuscript”.
Sherif Afifi is a book and paper conservator at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. He has a wonderful collection of videos dedicated to bookbinding, book conservation and care for the other paper-related materials.
