TabulaRasa. Clay, wax, and the impact of erasable writing technologies on manuscript cultures

Preliminary information on the project

Key data

ERC CoG 2024 (GA 101170566); Host Institution: University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’; co-beneficiaries: University of Naples ‘Federico II’, Cologne University of Applied Sciences (TH Köln); funding: 1.990.000 €

Start: May 1st, 2025; duration: 5 years

Participants:

• ‘L’Orientale’: Prof. Michele Cammarosano (PI)

• Federico II: Prof. Alessandro Vergara (Dept. of Chemical Sciences, DSC; responsible for cooperation), Prof. Barbara Liguori (Dept. of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, DICMaPI), Prof. Vincenzo Morra (Dept. of Earth Sciences, Environment and Resources, DiSTAR)

• TH Köln, Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS): Prof. Ester S.B. Ferreira (responsible for cooperation), Dr Doris Oltrogge, Andreas Krupa MA

Positions to be advertised: 

1. One PhD student (3 years [years 2–4], 65% of working time, salary class E13/2) to be hired at TH Köln in connection with the planned research on wax mixtures (Archaeometry, Conservation Sciences)

2. RA1 & RA2: Two post-docs (5 years, 100% of working time) to be hired at ‘L’Orientale’ in connection with the planned research on rewritable media in the Classical world (RA1) and Medieval to Early Modern Europe (RA2). Required expertise: historical / philological / papyrological / palaeographical / codicological / archaeological. Gross salary: 40.000 € p.a.

3. RA4: One post-doc (2 years [years 2–3], 100% of working time) to be hired at ‘L’Orientale’ in connection with the planned palaeographical study (required expertise: Latin palaeography). Expected gross salary: 40.000 € p.a. 

4. RA3: One post-doc (3 years [years 2–4]) to be hired at ‘Federico II’ in connection with the planned petrographic analyses and experiments involving clay manuscripts (required expertise: Material and Earth Sciences).

Background and General Goals  

The written word is rightly celebrated for its ability to transcend centuries and millennia, outlasting human lives and generations. Yet, by its very nature, writing is also ephemeral: what can be written can also be erased. A stone inscription can be chiseled away to make room for a new one, ink can be washed off, and pencil notes on scraps of paper can be erased with a simple rubber eraser. Today, digital media has introduced new forms of deletion and rewriting, often paired with the capacity to preserve earlier versions and retrieve them when needed.  

Throughout history, societies that have used writing – from ancient Mesopotamia to the present – have needed to recycle writing materials. Whether on clay tablets, papyrus sheets, parchment, or iPads, erasing and rewriting have been essential practices. This need is particularly evident in the context of what might be termed ‘ephemeral writings’: texts not intended for long-term preservation but for temporary use, where the ability to reuse the writing surface is especially practical.  One of the most typical contexts for ephemeral writings is writing exercises. Other recurring examples across various societies include transient notes, drafts, registers that require periodic updating, and today’s countless SMS messages or WhatsApp chats that soon become redundant and we are eager to delete to free up memory.  

Across the history of writing, diverse cultures have employed a wide array of materials for recording ephemeral texts. Among the most paradigmatic technologies for such purposes are clay tablets, widely used especially in the ancient Near Eastern and Aegean civilizations, and wax tablets, invented in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BCE and later adopted by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, becoming one of the principal writing materials in Europe until paper combined with graphite pencils became widespread in the Early Modern period.  

Clay and wax tablets are exemplary cases of "rewritable manuscripts," as they are infinitely reusable without requiring any addition or removal of material from the writing surface. A simple application of water softens raw clay, allowing inscribed or impressed text to be erased, while the malleability of wax enables text to be wiped clean with a spatula, and the surface be immediately rewritten. Many of us can picture the iconic image of the so-called Sappho, pensively holding a wax tablet in one hand with her stylus poised against her lips, as depicted in a famous fresco from Pompeii now housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.  

The material properties of different writing supports used over time for ephemeral texts, and the writing technologies associated with them, have played a crucial role in shaping fundamental aspects of the cultures in which they were employed. These include the development of letterforms and individual handwriting styles, the practices by which authors composed and recorded their works, and the methods used for administrative processes and commercial record-keeping. These cultural practices were deeply intertwined with the types of writing materials available and their specific functionalities – how letters were impressed, incised, or drawn; the tools employed, such as styluses, reeds, or pens; how these tools were held; and how written content could be erased and the writing surface reused.  

Yet, many aspects of the material and technological properties of these supports remain unknown. Their role and impact on the societies that used them are still not fully understood and appreciated.  

The TabulaRasa project seeks to illuminate these questions. Based at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ in partnership with the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ and the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, the project investigates how rewritable writing technologies – particularly those involving clay and wax – functioned in practice, how they interacted with other media, and how their material and technical characteristics impacted key aspects of the cultures in which they were used. Focusing on three historical-cultural areas – the Ancient Near East, the Classical world, and Medieval to Early Modern Europe – the project aims to develop a general theory of the role of rewritability in manuscript cultures.  

To achieve this, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from fields including philology, history, source research, palaeography, codicology, archaeometry, chemistry, petrography, and cultural heritage conservation will combine the codicological, palaeographical and material analysis of original manuscripts with the study of indirect sources and laboratory-based experimentation according to the principles of Historically Informed Replication Techniques. This approach will reconstruct how these once-central but now largely forgotten writing technologies worked, how they related to other media, and how they influenced textual composition practices and palaeographic development. Finally, the project will produce a traveling exhibition in which visitors of all ages will have the opportunity to experience these revived techniques firsthand, discovering the deep connections between writing methods from the past and the tablets and smartphones that play such a central role in our lives today.

Overview of Scientific Objectives  

TabulaRasa aims to understand the role of rewritability as a crucial aspect of manuscript cultures. This overarching goal is essentially historical in nature, and includes three major objectives in the domains of codicology, palaeography, and the study of manuscript cultures:

• In the domain of codicology, the project will achieve an in-depth understanding of clay manuscripts and wax tablets as material objects. The aim is to sift through the extensive corpora of existing clay manuscripts and approximately 3300 wax tablets (around 2500 from Antiquity and about 625 from the Medieval and Early Modern periods) and identify a purposeful subset of examples for in-depth analysis. Key aspects of these manuscript classes will be systematically investigated, including the composition and mechanical properties of clayey and wax pastes across different periods and cultures; sourcing, manufacturing, aging; processes of knowledge transfer and adaptation.

• In the domain of palaeography, the project will achieve an in-depth understanding of the relation between the material properties of clay and wax (pastes) and the associated writing techniques. This encompasses a thorough understanding of the biomechanics of writing techniques, including influence of environmental conditions, stylus materiality, shape, and handling, writing speed and processes, wedge/trace depth and shape, script density, layout elements, and legibility. Two exemplary case studies in the relevance of rewritable manuscripts for palaeographical development will be explored: the development of the characteristic traits of cuneiform script and the impact of writing on wax on the development of the Latin script.

• In the domain of the study of manuscript cultures, the project will provide a history of rewritable manuscripts in the exemplary historical contexts of the Ancient Near East, the Classical world, and Medieval to Early Modern Europe, illuminating their role in material and intellectual culture – why they were invented or introduced, how they were adapted to fulfill specific functions, how they interacted within each other and with other media. Furthermore, building on the results of the codicological and palaeographical studies, the project will develop a general theory of manuscript rewritability as a result of a systematic, cross-cultural, comparative analysis of practices of manuscript reuse.

ISACM A30276, c.18th cent. BCE | So-called Sappho, MANN 9084, Naples | Kano (Nigeria), 2023, A. Brigaglia/D. Mu'az | KB 19.295-97, Brussels, c.1380 | Tim Cook via Twitter, 2019

Impressions from the workshop (photos by Andreas Krupa; the replica of AO 1630 is by Luba Zhiltsova)