Trying something new

I started this blog as a way to keep me focused on my papyrus projects. As it turns out, I have been working on papyrus projects more or less steadily this whole time, such that I am just now updating this blog! I’ve completed a few projects and I am excited to share them with you over the next few weeks.

About a year ago, I did a project for a friend whose birthday was coming up. I had this idea to create a Koine Greek manuscript and to antique it so that it would appear to have just been discovered in an archaeological dig somewhere. Little did I know the path down which this would lead me.

I chose 1 Timothy 4:12 as the highlighted passage for this work, the verse that says: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”

I then did some research on the way that Koine Greek was written in the early days. At this point I knew almost nothing about it, except that they used mostly capital letters. I happened across a site that featured a few pictures of the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest (mostly) complete manuscript in Greek. I copied the letters from the codex and matched them up with the Greek letters that I had learned in college. I wasn’t prepared for how different they were!

At one time I had thought that the ancient scribes wrote in all capital letters, which would correspond to the ones I knew:

                

            And I thought it would contain none of the lowercase letters:

              

            The ancient Koine Greek script actually contained a mixture of the two:

              

The credit for the Koine font above goes to Allan Loder. Click here if you would like to download the font.

For this project, I was using a script more similar to the script used in the Codex Sinaiticus. Looking back, it was a mistake to use this script on papyrus, since the Codex Sinaiticus was written on parchment, hundreds of years after the period I am interested in, when papyrus was predominant.

At any rate, away I went. I wrote the text in two columns (which was rare on papyrus, come to find out) and it turned out pretty well. I then tore into it with my hands and used a knife to cut some of the edges. I worked it into a nice fragment shape:

Then I took a piece of sandpaper and applied it to the text itself, in some cases obliterating a letter or two. I then bought a nice frame that made the fragment appear as if it were floating in midair. I gave it to my friend and he liked it.

I ended up with a pretty nice piece, but with several historical inaccuracies. These were:

• I used the Codex Sinaiticus script on papyrus
• I wrote the text itself in two columns, a practice that was fairly rare in the early days. If they did it, they also would have written it in a much more beautiful script than I had the talent for at that time.
• I did not look up any variant readings to try and determine what the original text would have been.
• I did not use any nomina sacra (I didn’t even know what those were at the time)

There are three others that are forgivable since my resources are limited here in the US:

1. The first would be the type of ink. The type of ink the ancients would have used is not in very high supply here in the US. It would have been iron gall ink, most likely, and while it is possible to make it, I’m not quite there yet. 
2. The second inaccuracy is the type of papyrus. At the time that I made this, I didn’t know much about papyrus, only that it was available at my local art supply stores and that it was cheap enough to buy moderate quantities and experiment with it. Without getting into too much detail, the art of making papyrus paper was actually lost hundreds of years ago and only revived last century. Click here for a link to the story. As a result, the quality of papyrus that has managed to make its way to the United States is limited. There are 4 types, and they are all the same. It is rare to find a sheet of papyrus that looks the same as the ancient manuscripts.
3. The third one was the type of pen. I used a bamboo pen because it was the best I could come up with. I didn’t have a feather pen (they don’t sell them in stores here) and I was pretty sure the ancient scribes didn’t use brushes to write on papyrus. It wasn’t until later that I realized how close I really was, though.

I was surprised at how easy it was to produce this piece. I ended up with a pretty nice piece of art. It didn’t take too long and it wasn’t cost-prohibitive. I really liked the idea, but at the time, I was kind of focusing on Egyptian, so I shelved it for the time being. I knew that it was a project that would make a nice gift sometime down the road.