Recent research has suggested that some of the inks used in Herculaneum papyri do not consist of pure carbon. Starting from this finding, in June 2018 a preliminary campaign of analysis by means of X-Ray fluorescence (XRF) of external portions removed mechanically from their original rolls in the eighteenth century (the so-called scorze) took place at the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. Also in this case, the aim of the survey was to investigate the ink composition in order to detect possible traces of metal. This article sums up the results of this survey.
Cleruchic land was attributed by the Ptolemies to their soldiers to provide them with a living. In the early Roman period, this land category gradually took the appearance of private property, known as catoecic land. On the formal side, however, catoecic land retained some elements of the ancient procedure devised for its cession within a military context. A survey of the procedure, published in a previous article, combined with an examination of the format in a string of documents from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, makes it possible to explain also the atypical format of a group of documents related to this procedure in the late second and early third century CE: contrary to the usual practice in this period, several such documents were written transuersa charta, with the writing across the fibres.
