Archaeometric philology for the study of deteriorated and overlapping layers of ink: the colour code of an early Qur’anic fragment

A multidisciplinary approach involving archaeometry and philology can often be mutually beneficial in the field of manuscript studies. When forms of degradation occur, the manuscript page can in some cases be puzzling for philologists and palaeographers. On the other hand, the selection of the regions of interest to be subjected to material analyses and the choice of the analytical strategy to put in place need the support of the philological observations. Often the research questions cannot be fully addressed by either discipline independently, but only through their combination, the archaeometric philological approach. Among the various manuscript traditions in which the two disciplines can find a common ground of research, the field of early Qur’anic manuscripts represents a challenging area of investigation because of the use of a colour code in their writing system. This paper presents a successful application of a combined approach for the interpretation of a deteriorated and multi-layered Qur’anic codex. The non-invasive material analyses, in continuous dialogue with palaeographic and philological observations, allowed for a comprehensive assessment of the writing materials, identifying the nature of the deteriorated pigments and the rules of the adopted colour code.