NOVEL ARCHAEOMETRICAL AND HISTORICAL TRANSDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATION OF EARLY 19th CENTURY HELLENIC MANUSCRIPT REGARDING INITIATION TO SECRET “PHILIKE HETAIREIA”

Authors

  • I. Liritzis Laboratory of Yellow River Cultural Heritage, Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, Minglun Road 85, China; European Academy European Academy of Sciences & Arts, Class IV (Natural Sciences), St. Peter-Bezirk 10, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria; Edinburgh University, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, Dept of Archaeology, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, Scotland; Rhodes University, Dept of Physics & Electronics, Makhanda (Grahamstown) 6140, Eastern Cape, South Africa
  • I. Iliopoulos Department of Geology, Patras University, 265 04 Rio Patra, Greece
  • I. Andronache Research Center for Integrated Analysis and Territorial Management – CAIMT4-12, Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest, Regina Elisabeta Avenue, Bucharest, 3rd district,030018, Romania
  • M. Kokkaliari Department of Geology, Patras University, 265 04 Rio Patra, Greece
  • V. Xanthopoulou Department of Geology, Patras University, 265 04 Rio Patra, Greece; Laboratory of Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis, School of Natural Sciences, University of Patras, Rio, Patras, Greece

Keywords:

Iron gall ink, fractal, Minkowski, RGB, XRF, Raman, NIR, spectrum, radiocarbon, historical, spectroscopy, pulp

Abstract

A new handwritten twenty pages’ manuscript of initiation to the Greek secret “friendly society” organization which was formed beginning of 19th century and essentially established the Greek independence against the Turks has been investigated. Historical accounts, spectroscopy analysis using Raman, X Ray Fluorescence and Near Infrared, for paper and ink characterization, as well as radiocarbon dating, and fractal of Minkowski Dimension algorithm of 5-lines and full-page handwritten text to identify number of scribers, and a novel pre-processing RGB color analysis of ink and paper identification have been applied. The investigation and results verify the dating of this manuscript to 1819, identify five types of iron gall inks, characterize the pulpwood and identify five different paper lots and four scribes from the ink content and handwritten styles of the com-pact five lines text and whole text pages. The results are mutually corroborated.

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Published

2023-07-28

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Articles