Getting to the Bottom of Book Bindings
6 June 2024

Photo: Benedikt Reier
Originally developed to read sealed cuneiform tablets, the ENCI CT scanner is suitable for examining various types of written artefacts. CSMC researchers are currently employing it to gain new insights into a little-researched phenomenon: the reuse of manuscripts in the production of book bindings.
In many writing cultures, writing supports such as paper or parchment were expensive and scarce. It was therefore common practice in many places to reuse manuscripts. In the Islamic world, for instance, damaged or outdated manuscripts, including religious documents, were used for book production for many centuries. This technique played a role in the production of book bindings in particular: manuscript pages were often used as reinforcement or lining to make the bindings more robust. This protected both the outside and the inside of the book. In some cases, manuscript fragments were also reused for their aesthetic quality or symbolic meaning.
The reuse of fragments in book bindings is a well-known phenomenon among experts, but one on which there has not been a lot of research to date. Today, books for which discarded manuscripts were used pose a particular challenge for restorers and conservators: the fragments are often damaged or soiled and must be preserved with care.
In cooperation with the Hamburg State and University Library (SUB), researchers at the CSMC are currently conducting initial trials to analyse selected manuscripts from the Middle East, which belong to the holdings of the SUB, using the mobile computer tomograph ENCI. ENCI allows researchers to carry out non-invasive tomographic analyses of written artefacts and gain detailed insights into the interior of the objects. Originally designed to read sealed ancient cuneiform tablets, ENCI is now being used for the first time to analyse other written artefacts.
The current series of tests is being carried out by Middle East historian Benedikt Reier, who heads the project on ‘The Archival Topography of Medieval Jerusalem: Record Keeping in a Provincial Town' at the Cluster of Excellence UWA. If the procedure proves successful, the researchers hope to be able to utilise the potential of ENCI for research into global book cultures.