[split] Jorge's Retracer Thread: darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

[Jorge_Stolfi]

You yourself say that the colour tone changes constantly. Therefore, a later change or addition is virtually impossible.[...] The pages are next to each other. Nevertheless, you can see that two different inks were used. You can't tell me that space was left to insert text later with red ink. Nevertheless, I have the same red on both pages but different writing ink. Now it is very likely that the darker ink was also used to insert corrections and additions.

I am not sure I understand you argument.  Indeed there is variation in the ink color within and between pages f67r1 and f67r2.  

Some of the ink color variation within the same page can be explained as normal ink-flow effect as the pen is periodically recharged and eventually starts running out of ink.   Some can be explained by variable degrees of wear over the page, like near the edges of f67r2.  That does not explain isolated glyphs that are noticeably darker than their surroundings, like the o in the otaldy label at 12:00 of f67r1; but those can be cases where the Scribe himself went back and reinforced some glyphs that had come out too weak or crooked.  

Other cases are harder to explain that way, like the o in okal at 11:30 on f67r2.  Or the kar in ytokar at 07:00 on the same page. 

What I think happened to the brown parts on page f67r2 is that, decades or centuries after the initial scribing,  the whole text and part of the drawings, which had faded to near invisibility, were carefully restored.  Then, decades or centuries after that, a few glyphs here and there were retouched again. 

As for the red text, my best guess is that it was retraced over original brown text, at some unknown time.  Possibly even when the color paints were applied, which seems to have been even later than the last retracing round of the Zodiac and Herbal pages (by the Boobs Retracer).  The red ink (unlike the brown one) is prone to cracking and falling off.  I can see brown traces left where this has happened.  However I am not sure that it is brown ink; it could be some brown component of the red ink that stuck to the vellum better than the red pigment and binder.

All the best, --stolfi