Identification and classification of historical writing inks in spectroscopy: a methodological overview

The identification of the type of ink should be among the primary goals of manuscript description. Several techniques of instrumental analysis are available, and new tools have been appearing on the market, the main development having been to more portability and user friendliness. In this article, we would like to give an overview of several existing methods and of their respective advantages and the results (on the example of a Coptic manuscript) that can be obtained with their help.