(25-03-2016, 12:07 PM)Anton wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.11) Two possibilities exist: the digits column is the addition by the original author, or it is the addition by a later reader. In the former case, it might provide insight into the essence of the index column. In the latter case, it might reflect the trail of thought of the reader. If he considered r and &192; to be the same character, he might have discerned the repetitive pattern "o r y e &163;" and decided that those stand for numbers 1 to 5, or simply numbered that sequence for reference.
However, the ink of the digits column looks pretty the same, and faded out in the same degree. Thus the probability is higher that it was created by the original author.
This is a bit risky. If the ink looks different, it is most likely to be from a different production, but that does not say much about the time difference.
If inks look similar, they could still be from different production and different times.
To know more, one should do the chemical analysis similarly to what McCrone has done, or multi-specral imaging. This will say something about the chemical composition. One cannot really conclude just from the colour.
The ink does fade with time, but very slowly.
The month names in the zodiac look darker, but they are also in a different hand. It is justified to call them later additions, but it seems impossible to say how much later.
One cannot say anything with any certainty just from the darkness of the ink, because recipes for ink production were quite standard through several centuries. The McCrone report briefly mentions this, but the discussions we had with Joe Barabe at the time made this point very clearly.