Ancient book's channeling journey to museum revealed in scientist's memoir

November 23, 2021

Bogs across Europe have thrown up all sorts of relics of the ancient past, from naturally preserved bodies to vessels containing butter more than a millennium old, but the 2006 discovery of an entire early medieval manuscript, entombed in a wet time capsule for so long, was unprecedented, said the National Museum of Ireland.

The book fell open upon discovery to reveal the Latin words in ualle lacrimarum (in the valley of tears), which identified it as a book of psalms. One unexpected feature was leather cover with a papyrus reed lining, suggesting a link with Egypt.

“It still blows me away,” said John Gillis, the chief manuscript conservationist at Trinity College Dublin, home of the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh and 450 other medieval Latin manuscripts.

“I spent the first three months retrieving the mass from the fridge, bringing it up to my lab and just staring at it, trying to make sense of it before I could start any sort of intervention work. Because once you disturb it, you are in effect losing evidence,” Gillis said.

“The rewards when you slowly lifted up a fragment, and suddenly beneath this little bit of decoration would appear, particularly the yellow pigment they used. It would kind of shine back at you,” Gillis said. “And you’d go: ‘Wow, I am the first person to see this in 1,200 years.’

“It was the purest conservation I’ve ever carried out. There is no repair, I’ve attached nothing new. All I’ve done is captured and stabilised.”