Thanks to a new visualization technology, mysterious letters in centuries-old books and manuscripts at the Bodleian Library in Oxford have been revealed. The technology allows researchers to map the surface of these historical objects and reveal their hidden features.
One such discovery concerns an 8th-century book, a copy of the Acts of the Apostles from the Christian New Testament. Researchers suspected that the book belonged to a woman, but her name was unknown. In 2022, researcher Jessica Hodgkinson of the University of Leicester decided to examine the book in more detail and discovered a hidden engraving on page 18, directly below the Latin text. The engraving read “EaDBURG BIREð CǷ….N,” with the last word incomplete. Hodgkinson believes that the first symbol is a cross, and the name of the book’s owner is probably after it. Hodgkinson and his colleagues suggest that Edburgh was a nun, the abbess of a religious community in Minster-in-Tanet, in the English county of Kent.
The images in the margins of this book are not the only example of hidden inscriptions and drawings discovered in Oxford in recent months. One of the first items in the Bodleian Library’s collection to be scanned as part of the Archiox project was copper printing plates dating back 200 to 300 years from the Rawlinson Collection. Archiox technology has also revealed new clues about how objects were created, such as the earliest known map of the British Isles, dating from the 14th century.
The new imaging technology can display the physical texture and contours of a book page, manuscript, or the surface of other historical objects such as printing plates in great detail, revealing features that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye or standard cameras. This technology is part of the Archiox project, which aims to create digital representations of various objects from the Bodleian Library’s collection.
The Bodleian Library is not the only institution to take advantage of this new visualization technology. In recent months, hidden inscriptions and drawings have been discovered in other Oxford libraries thanks to this technology.
These findings are not only fascinating for their historical and cultural value, but also shed new light on the lives of the people who owned and used these books, manuscripts, and printing plates. New visualization technology opens up new avenues for research. With its help, we can uncover more hidden treasures in centuries-old books and manuscripts that have survived to this day, giving us a deeper understanding of our past and the people who lived before us.
