‘Alchemical’ Inks in the Syriac Tradition

This paper explores recipes for ink making preserved in three Syriac alchemical manuscripts. First, I shall provide an analytical description of the scanty material transmitted in two codices kept at the British Library (Egerton 709 and Oriental 1593); then, particular attention will be devoted to a treatise that opens the collection of alchemical writings in the Cambridge MS Mm. 6.29 (15th century AD). This treatise includes several recipes on the making of inks that reveal evident similarities both with the instructions preserved in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition (especially in the so-called Leiden Papyrus) and with early medieval technical handbooks. A selection of Syriac recipes is edited here for the first time and translated and commented on in order to better understand the mechanisms that regulated the transmission of this technical material in Christian Near-Eastern communities.