Biblical Hebrew Forum

["R.G.Lehmann" <lehmann AT mail.uni-mainz.de>]

Andrew C Smith schrieb:

> In a context having nothing to do with Hebrew, I've worked quite a bit
> with palimpsests. Those are re-written documents, where somebody erased
> the first document, and then wrote over it a second document. This was
> done in times and places where writing materials were expensive or in
> short supply. All the palimpsests I've worked with previously were
> written on animal skins (Medieval). I've never heard of a papyrus
> palimpsest before. I think it should be very difficult to erase an entire
> document on papyrus without destroying the papyrus. How does this work?

Hi Andrew

You simply wash and maybe 'shave' it - Papyrus is a very solid material. 
There are
many Papyrus palimpsests, not only the Murabaát on in Hebrew, but also a lot 
of in
Aram,aic of the 5th Century BC from Egypt, e.g the famous tax list for the
Elephantine Temple, the Achiqar Papyrus and so on.

Greetings

reinhard g.lehmann

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       Reinhard G. Lehmann
       Lect. for Classical Hebrew and Aramaic
       Johannes-Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
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       tel: +49 - 6131 - 39 3284
       mailto:lehmann AT mail.uni-mainz.de
       look at http://www.uni-mainz.de/~lehmann/link.html
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