Small scribbles or big riddles found in a 1,300-year-old book?

Barely noticeable scribbles were found on a very old book. We can imagine a woman with a book in her hands 1,300 years ago, scribbling small forms of drawings and letters even without using pens. The book is a part of the Bible, a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, dating from the 8th century.

The book is currently housed in the Bodleian Library at the University of oxford. Researchers suspected that the book belonged to a woman, but only in 2022 did they come to a conclusion.

Last year, University of Leicester researcher Jessica Hodgkinson decided to give the images a chance to look again and pay attention to the details. This time, the surprise came when I noticed the scribbles that were on page 18.

Squiggles lit the light at the end of the tunnel

A phrase in Latin was identified, and later the researchers switched to the computer. The marks became evident and the phrase “”EaDBURG BIREð CǷ…N” appeared. Although the last word is incomplete, the analyzes indicated that the writing was done like some object and not with pens or inks.

Researcher Hodgkinson saw that the first symbol would be perfectly a cross, and later it would be a name. “Eadburg” possibly owned that book and the enigmatic scribbles. There is no information about this woman, although researchers are assuming that the book was from a nun.

Eadburg was a nun of the Minster-in-Thaet community in Kent, England. After the name, the letters that appear after are even more difficult to decipher, estimating that the term “prison” is written in Old English. Above the scribbles, the biblical text reports the arrest of two apostles and the researchers analyzed that Eadburg possibly added a comment to the text.

In addition to the writings, there are two drawings: a drawing of a person with outstretched arms and another drawing of a hand over a sad face, possibly wiping tears.

These mysterious traits were found due to a Bodleian image formation technology, capable of checking all the texture that exists on the paper. Any different identification in the texture, even if it is invisible to the naked eye, the technology can identify.

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