Unveiling the secrets of ancient Egyptian ink

At the dawn of recorded history, ancient Egyptians already used different colors of inks to highlight important messages on papyri. We studied the composition of 12 red and black inks on ancient Egyptian papyri (c. 100–200 CE) and were able to detect different lead-containing compounds in both red and black inks, revealing that lead was used as a dryer rather than a pigment. - submission by Marine Cotte, Thomas Christiansen, Sine Larsen