Exploring the materiality of (re)writing: the ‘Ephemeral Writings’ workshop, part one (Naples, 7–9 May 2025)

From 7 to 9 May 2025, the historic city of Naples welcomed the first part of the twin hands-on workshop Ephemeral Writings, organized by Michele Cammarosano and Claudia Colini and jointly funded by the TabulaRasa project and the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” / Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg. The first two days of the workshop, which also constituted the kick-off event for TabulaRasa, were hosted in the wonderful setting of the Complesso Monumentale San Lorenzo Maggiore thanks to the support of Fondazione San Bonaventura and Daniele Ferraiuolo (project SCRIPTVRA), while the third day took place in Palazzo Corigliano, seat of the Department of Asia, Africa and the Mediterranean of L’Orientale. The purpose? To bring together philologists, codicologists, conservators, archaeometrists, and palaeographers for exploring the relevance and technical workings of ‘Ephemeral Writings’.

Ephemeral… what?

The premise of the workshop is simple. Writing has a dual nature: on the one hand, it aims to record something, so that it stays over time; on the other, many forms of writing have always been meant to be temporary – drafts, notes, calculations, ephemeral messages. Crucially, in such cases it is often desirable to recycle the writing surface in order to make space for new text… and indeed a special relationship arises between these two categories – ephemeral writings and the recycling of the support. Exploring the material side of this nexus was precisely the aim of our workshop: how exactly does ‘rewriting’ work? What mechanical or chemical constraints shape the processes of writing, erasing, and rewriting? This, we argue, is a precondition for a better understanding of certain aspects of manuscript cultures related to literacy, administration, textual transmission, and even handwriting styles.

The workshop format – blending theory and practice

Central to Ephemeral Writings was a focus on historically informed, hands-on experimentation. Over three days, participants alternated between historical contextualisation and practical reconstruction. While short Impulsreferate concisely presented key data and facts on the use and interplay of (re)writable media in selected historical contexts – to be discussed subsequently among the participants – hands-on experiments, pre-planned in consultation with the invited experts and documented through photographs and video, formed the heart of the workshop. The experimental sessions also served as a space for discussion among all participants, evolving as the experiments unfolded and yielded results. On the final day, a roundtable provided a venue for concluding discussion, synthesis, and outlook.

From clay to wax, from papyrus to wooden boards

The Naples workshop was dedicated to inkless writing in cuneiform and linear scripts on (unbaked, moist) clay and wax mixtures, as well as to writing with inks on ceramics, wooden boards, and papyrus. Accordingly, the focus lay on the manuscript cultures of pharaonic Egypt, the ancient Near East, and classical Antiquity. For wax tablets, however, a broader chronological framework was adopted – from ancient Mesopotamia to the Early Modern period – in order to ensure continuity in the investigation of this long-lived medium. The forthcoming second part of the workshop, to be held in Hamburg in the first half of 2027, will instead focus on writing with ink or metalpoint on papyrus, parchment, paper, wood, and ‘erasable coatings’, with particular attention to specific manuscript cultures from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period.

The rationale behind this distribution reflects a dual objective: first, to focus on writing materials specifically designed for reuse, such as wax tablets, clay tablets, and (coated) wooden tablets; and second, to explore not only their technological functionality but also their cultural significance, in particular their interaction with other coexisting and competing writing materials. To achieve this, we chose to prioritise key historical and cultural macro-contexts. As for the experiments, some specimens had been prepared in advance, while others were produced during the sessions, in order to take the time factor into account as accurately as possible.

How we worked

Day 1 began with Impulsreferate surveying rewriting practices in the ancient Near East (Jonathan Taylor, The British Museum), pharaonic Egypt (Elena Luise Hertel, University of Hamburg / CSMC), classical Antiquity (Serena Ammirati, University Roma Tre), and the use of wax tablets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Doris Oltrogge, TH Köln / CICS). In the afternoon, the first hands-on sessions allowed participants to experiment with inkless writing on clay mixtures (led by Maria Verde, University of Naples Federico II) and with ink on papyrus and pottery (led by Olivier Bonnerot, University of Hamburg / CSMC, and Myriam Krutzsch, Berlin).

In order to give participants the opportunity to experience first-hand how different it is to work with hand-prepared materials as opposed to standardised, industrially produced ones, we sought wherever possible to prepare ourselves the materials used in the experiments.

In the experimental sessions, key elements of our concept were (i) enabling everyone – both speakers and audience participants – to engage personally with the various techniques of writing and erasing; (ii) the creation of a shared and homogeneous basis for observation and evaluation, to which each participant was invited to contribute; and (iii) the possibility of informal and open discussion among participants during the experiments. All three principles proved to be of great importance for the success of the workshop. Broad active participation was made possible by preparing appropriate quantities of materials for at least twenty-five people. In order to provide as coherent and uniform a basis as possible for participants’ self-evaluation, and to supply model texts in cuneiform for the many participants unfamiliar with this type of writing, we prepared in advance a dedicated handout (see below) as well as an evaluation sheet adapted by Claudia and Michele from the one developed by Claudia’s team and in particular by Giuseppe Marotta for a previous experimental study. Discussions during the experiments were further facilitated by the wonderful space in which we were hosted – the Sala Brancaccio, made available by the Fondazione San Bonaventura – where it was possible to arrange the work tables so that all participants could see one another and engage both in small-group discussions and, when appropriate, collectively.

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Workshop handout

Fifty shades of clay

For the clay tablets, Maria Verde and Alberto De Bonis collected two types of clay, both in Salerno province: one from Rufoli, a small village in the Salerno municipality, where traditional ceramic crafts exploiting local clay have survived for centuries; the other clay was collected in the Cilento area near the archaeological site of Elea, the ancient Greek colony that was a thriving centre of ceramic production until the city became Roman and was known as Velia.
The two types of clay were chosen for their material properties, which are comparable to those that, according to recent petrographic studies, characterise certain groups of Neo-Assyrian tablets.

To make the clay easily workable, Maria and Alberto then processed it according to traditional procedures, first drying it overnight at 90 °C and then crushing it in a mortar. Depending on the variety of clay used, on whether or not a tempering agent (sand) was added, and on how the mixture was worked with water by hand, the experience of impressing wedges proved to be extremely different – it was fascinating to observe even expert Assyriologists being surprised by how soft or hard tablets that they thought would behave similarly could be at the moment of writing. For many participants, this was the first time engaging with cuneiform writing – certainly one of the oldest and most fascinating writing systems in history, and by no means as difficult to learn as is often believed… 🙂

The styli, which unlike pens and reed pens must have a sharp edge to be impressed into soft clay, were as ‘historically informed’ as possible, including both classic reed styli (from Arundo donax, arguably the species used in ancient Mesopotamia) and styli made of bone and metal. The latter were prepared by the artisan and archaeomusicologist Marco Sciascia, an expert in metalworking and granulation, and the maker of many of the replicas of ancient wax tablets and writing implements now included in the ‘Neverending manuscript lab’ at L’Orientale.

_{(Above: photos by Andreas Krupa)}

Inks & co.

As far as inks are concerned, too, we were fortunate to be able to work with handcrafted materials. Olivier Bonnerot produced three different varieties specifically for the workshop: a carbon-based ink following a passage in Dioscorides; an iron-gall ink prepared according to a recipe preserved in a Byzantine manuscript of the Bibliothèque nationale de France; and a plant-based ink made from gall nuts he collected from an old oak tree near the monastery of Fotodotis on Naxos – wow!

As writing tools, we had both brushes of the type used in pharaonic Egypt, purchased from Römer Shop, and pens of various kinds made from different species of reed (some participants had, of course, brought along their own favourite ones… :)) Among the participants there was also a group of students from the courses in Classical Philology and Modern Philology taught by Prof. Marco Cursi (University of Naples Federico II and Accademia dei Lincei), to whom we are grateful for throwing themselves into the writing experiments with remarkable enthusiasm and for contributing all their palaeographical passion and expertise! Once again, it was fascinating to observe how different the writing experience proved to be depending on the surface, the writing tool, and of course the type of ink, but also on its specific consistency – the effect varies greatly depending on whether the mixture is more or less watery, whether it has settled for a longer or shorter time, and so on.

As writing surfaces, we had at our disposal ceramic fragments kindly provided by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli, to whom we are very grateful, as well as sheets of papyrus, which we had to purchase from Römer Shop after unsuccessfully trying to buy papyrus from the Museo del Papiro in Syracuse. As Myriam Krutzsch, one of the leading experts in the restoration and conservation of ancient papyri, confirmed to us, this material has little in common with original papyri from the pharaonic period… We nevertheless hope to be able to repeat the experiments in the future with self-produced papyrus! 🙂

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our tests of writing and erasing techniques – necessarily non-systematic and of a brainstorming character – immediately highlighted that there is no single technique that is a priori ideal for all types of surfaces in relation to all types of inks. In general, however, the participants’ observations converged in stressing that, as far as papyrus is concerned, the erasing method that produced the best results among those we tested was the use of a damp natural sponge – also explicitly mentioned in ancient sources – while the worst was rubbing with pumice stone, which inevitably abrades and damages the surface (at the time we were not yet aware of an illuminating post Brent Nongbri published just a few days before on Pumice, Parchment, and Papyrus!).

A keynote on ‘reconstructions’

An inspiring keynote by Maartje Stols-Witlox (University of Amsterdam) closed the first day. In her lecture ‘Personal views on past practices: Reflecting on reconstructions as a research method’, Maartje showed how complex the concepts of ‘reconstruction’ and ‘historically accurate replication techniques’ can be. Her insights, rooted in several fascinating research projects that she led or participated in, and the select bibliography on the topic that she so kindly provided to the participants, have been and will continue to be extremely valuable for the design and planning of future replication experiments!

Writing on wood, carving wood

The morning of the second day, 8 May, was devoted primarily to writing with ink on wood. In his Impulsreferat, Andreas Krupa (TH Köln, CICS), an expert in the working, conservation, and analysis of wood, offered an introduction to this fascinating material. He showed how not only differences in the type of ink and the species of wood, but also different ways of preparing the surface – for instance, whether it is smoothed with a plane or with sandpaper – have a major impact on the writing process, including the greater or lesser possibility of erasing the ink and reusing the same support. Working with a plane or with sandpaper has a completely different effect on the pores of the wood and thus on how much the surface absorbs the ink, and consequently on how easily it can be washed away, as he practically demonstrated hands-on. Additionally, Doris Oltrogge presented an insight into the topic of ‘erasable coatings’, primarily chalk-based coatings used in Medieval and Early Modern times for obtaining easily rewritable surfaces. These could be inscribed in ink, the subject of preliminary tests performed at CICS in Cologne, or in metalpoint, which will be addressed in the second part of the workshop in Hamburg.

By then, with timing that could hardly have been better, Andrea Brigaglia, an Africanist at the University of Naples L’Orientale, and Dahiru Mu’az of the University of Kano in Nigeria arrived at the workshop and offered a practical demonstration of writing practices – and also of erasing – on the Qurʾanic tablet, which remains in Nigeria the fundamental tool for learning to write in traditional Qurʾanic schools. This practice of writing and erasing with ink on a wooden board, which ultimately has its earliest roots in the scribal tradition of pharaonic Egypt, constitutes an extraordinary living fossil of rewritable writing practices – a case study of great interest in its own right, but also a source of important questions and research impulses. And if you would like to know more, you are in luck – Andrea and Dahiru have just published an article on this topic in the volume Erasing and Rewriting in Manuscript Cultures!

Turning to the use of wood not as a direct support for ink writing but as a material used to hold wax mixtures, Andreas Krupa offered a practical demonstration of how to produce a tablet from a block of wood and then create a recessed frame into which the melted wax mixture can be poured, working with traditional tools and especially with the plane. We were thus able to try our hand at this process ourselves, as unusual for a papyrologist or palaeographer as it was enjoyable. One of the aims of the TabulaRasa project is also the reconstruction of manufacturing techniques for wax tablets in different regions and historical periods, and we very much look forward to everything that Andreas, Gesa Sperlich, and the rest of the team will discover in this area in the coming years!

On buzzing bees and written waxes

But if the wooden tablet with a recessed field constitutes the ‘hardware’, what about the wax mixtures that form the actual ‘software’ of wax tablets? After the generous lunch prepared by the cooperative of Franciscan friars of San Lorenzo Maggiore, and a visit to the Roman forum of Neapolis beneath the San Lorenzo complex, Ester Ferreira (TH Köln / CICS, an expert in chemistry applied to the analysis and conservation of cultural heritage and coordinator of the Cologne research unit within TabulaRasa) initiated us into the wonders and remarkable chemical and rheological properties of beeswax. Doris Oltrogge (also of TH Köln and a team member of TabulaRasa) then presented the four different types of beeswax-based mixtures selected for the writing experiments, discussing their historical contexts and the interpretative intricacies involved in reconstructing them on the basis of indirect sources ranging from actual ‘recipes’ – in particular the instructions left by a certain chirurgus Schicketantz, dating to the seventeenth century – to educated guesses based on clues found in ancient sources. These mixtures, recipes, and clues were also documented in the handout made available to all participants.

The time had then come to enact – with small pots for bain-marie heating and precision scales in hand – the recipe of the surgeon Schicketantz and the other selected mixtures, to pour them while still liquid into the recessed wooden tablets prepared earlier, and, once cooled, to test them in writing and rewriting using a variety of styli differing in material (bronze, brass, bone, wood – also prepared by Marco Sciascia) and in the profile of the writing tip – different angles, sharper or more rounded points. As with writing on clay and on wood, it was once again fascinating to experience first-hand how different the writing process can be, as well as the possibility of obliterating what has been written in order to reuse the surface, depending on the specific properties of each factor involved and on their interaction. Different styli leave different traces, different wax mixtures allow the incised marks to be erased to different degrees and in different ways – and here, of course, the various methods of scraping also play a role – whether the spatula is heated over a flame or not, and so on. Not to mention the impact of the specific quality of each ingredient, the tools with which the mixture is worked, and the sequence in which different components are added – aspects that are by no means marginal, as Maartje Stols-Witlox had already prompted us to reflect on the previous evening. The self-evaluation protocols filled in by the participants bear witness to the number and variety of factors involved, and to the role that the personal background of each of us also plays in reenacting and evaluating writing practices.

(Above: photos by Andreas Krupa)

Unplanned experiments… and experiences

In the final part of the second afternoon, everyone was free to continue experimenting with any technique of their choice, in a kind of hands-on brainstorming. There was also room for an amusing unplanned experiment. Luba Zhiltsova, a Paris-based MA student in Assyriology with remarkable talent for writing in cuneiform, had brought with her a self-made replica of an Old Babylonian letter tablet from Mari (UET 5.81, the so-called Ea-naṣir tablet). When the tablet had already dried, she noticed that one sign had gone wrong. With great care, she moistened the affected area with a damp cloth, smoothed it with her finger, and then re-impressed the correct sign. During the workshop, we then projected two photographs side by side onto the screen – one of the corrected tablet and one of another replica by her that did not contain such a correction – and asked the participants to identify the correction without knowing in which image it was present. The fact that it took some minutes to locate the relevant spot suggests that it may indeed be possible to carry out corrections in such a way that they are no longer recognisable as such afterwards – another question that TabulaRasa intends to investigate systematically.

At the end of the day, just as we had concluded our work and were about to start putting the materials away, we were surprised by festive pealing bells. As tradition has it, the bells of San Lorenzo and of all the churches in the city had begun to ring because… a new Pope had just been elected, i.e. Leo XIV! This too was a special moment of the workshop that we will remember. At that point, devout Catholics or not, it was time for the conference dinner at Antonio e Antonio on the seafront, almost opposite Castel dell’Ovo… and then for some well-earned rest 🙂

Drawing the threads together

On the morning of the final day, 9 May, we moved to Palazzo Corigliano for the concluding roundtable, followed by a visit to the Oriental manuscript collection of the L’Orientale University Library, presented by librarian Antonella Muratgia.

The roundtable provided an opportunity to draw together the results of the previous two days, to discuss and further explore individual points of interest, and to reflect critically on what seemed to work as expected and what, in hindsight, we would do differently. Among the aspects that emerged as particularly positive and successful was the brainstorming character of the experimental sessions. On the one hand, in order to achieve scientific progress in understanding the material aspects of rewriting practices, it will be essential to take the individual factors involved into account in a much more systematic way, including the factor of temporality, and to document all stages in a scientific and quantitative rather than impressionistic manner. On the other hand, it was precisely the variety of techniques considered during the workshop, and the breadth of the historical and cultural horizons of the scribal traditions involved, that made the initiative genuinely interdisciplinary and allowed specific issues and questions to be identified and brought into focus, to be addressed in depth in the future.

The hands-on format also emerged as a powerful trigger for breaking down disciplinary barriers. Philologists found themselves working alongside conservators, chemists alongside palaeographers – all engaging with shared questions about materiality, reuse, and cultural habits.

Another element that proved particularly fruitful was making available to all participants a handout describing the materials used in the experiments, together with a dedicated evaluation sheet. Many of these evaluation sheets – which numerous participants filled in with great care – contain a wealth of valuable and thought-provoking observations, especially where they are accompanied by photographic documentation. To give a concrete sense of the important contribution made by participants through these evaluation sheets, we present here those generously shared by two young researchers, the Egyptologist Elena L. Hertel and the palaeographer Leonardo Napoletano.

The diversity of these evaluations and observations – which also reflects the different competences and backgrounds of the participants – bears witness to the multiplicity of factors that shape the various modes and outcomes of erasing-and-rewriting practices, as well as to the complexity of their interactions. Too often, apodictic assumptions are found in the secondary literature about the erasability or non-erasability of carbon ink versus iron-gall ink on papyrus, parchment, and so on. Yet terms such as papyrus or carbon ink – not to mention wax – while certainly valid and productive in many contexts, in and of themselves say very little, and can even be misleading, when it comes to determining the actual modes and possibilities of erasing what has been written and of reusing the writing surface. There is no alternative here but to combine material analysis, source research, and experimentation under controlled conditions, based on sophisticated protocols. A compelling example of how productive this kind of research can be, once the appropriate approach is adopted, is provided by the pair of articles published respectively by Sara Fani and by a team coordinated by Claudia Colini on erasing and rewriting practices in the Arab world, recently included in the SMC volume already mentioned above.

Filled with gratitude towards the invited participants, the students and colleagues who took part so actively and with such remarkable passion, and all those who made this initiative possible, we look very much forward to the second part of the project – see you in Hamburg!

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