Forty Centuries of Ink; or, a chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curi by David Nunes Carvalho
page 53 of 472 (11%)
page 53 of 472 (11%)
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"chalkanthum" and possessed not only the appearance
of, but the virtues of what we know as blue copperas or sulphate of copper. It continued in use as long as men were unacquainted with the art of lixiviating salt, or, in other words, as long as they had no vitriol manufactories. Commingled with lampblack, bitumen or like black substances in gummy water, it was acceptable to the priests for ritualistic writings and was in general vogue for several centuries thereafter under the name of (blue) "vitriolic" ink, notwithstanding the fact that there could not be any lasting chemical union between such materials. It was the so-called "vitriolic" ink, which is said to have "corroded the delicate leaves of the papyrus and to have eaten through both parchment and vellum." These deductions, however, do not agree with some of the historians and scholars like Noel Humphreys, author of the "Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing," London, 1855, a recognized authority on the subject of ancient MSS., who but repeats in part the text of earlier writers, when he says, p. 101: "Examples of early Greek MSS. of the last century previous to the Christian era are not confined to Egyptian sources; the buried city of Herculaneum, in Italy, partially destroyed about seventy- nine years before the Christian era, and injured by |
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