116v

[Koen G]

Searcher - your first links don't work, they refer to some kind of webmail where one has to login.

I see the VM as mostly related to naval trade, so to me it would make a lot of sense if a spell to protect one's ship was included in the manuscript. This miltos, which was very likely a red ochre used to waterproof ships, i.e. a protective layer on ships, might perhaps even be used metaphorically in seafarer's circles, like we would use "shield" or "cover" as metaphors for (divine) protection as well. Here's an interesting paper about the substance: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Either way, together with the "achiton", this would be the second mention of a protective substance that was applied to materials. Very interesting.

Edit: in the article I linked, the author says that all mentions of this miltos depend on Homer's using it to describe "miltos-cheeked ships", i.e. ships that have their hulls treated with the material. This is actually good news, because it means that the miltos could have been known to anyone schooled in classical literature - which would have been a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places and times.

Also:

By the fourth century, no doubt in response to shipworm, Greek merchant ships were sometimes, like the Nemi ships, sheathed in lead (or perhaps, but far more rarely, copper), and this practice seems to have become widespread during the Hellenistic period.47 In the Kyrenia ship this lead was not applied directly to the hull, but over a thin matting that Steffy describes as composed of “agave leaves, simply woven and saturated in a red-brown resinous pitch … A few intact areas of the outer hull surfaces also contained traces of the red-brown residue.”

So this means that both substances were associated with:
- Protective coating AND
- Copper plates