The Mappae clavicula is a medieval

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 text, a compilation containing recipes for a number of crafts including metalwork, dyeing and mosaic, as well as several recipes relevant to painting. Of this substantial collection (about 300 recipes), the core was probably originally compiled around AD 600, perhaps in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...

, and contains items traceable to earlier Classical

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 texts and to the Stockholm papyrus

Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis

The Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, which is also known as the Stockholm Papyrus, dates from c. 300 AD and contains craft recipes written in Demotic Greek. The Stockholm papyrus has 154 recipes for dying, coloring gemstones, cleaning pearls, and imitation gold and silver...

 and Leiden Papyrus X

Leyden papyrus X

The Leyden papyrus X is a papyrus codex written in Greek at about the end of the 3rd century A.D. or perhaps around 250 A.D. and buried with its owner, and today preserved at Leiden in the Netherlands. It contains alchemical texts, mostly concerned with making dyes and alloys which can be made to...

. The first few recipes in the Phillips-Corning MS of the Mappae clavicula were long considered integral, but they form a distinct separate entity, the De coloribus et mixtionibus, which survives (in whole or in part) in at least 62 manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

s.

Manuscripts

A great many mediaeval manuscripts contain recipes from this compilation text. The best manuscripts of the Mappae clavicula date from the eighth to the twelfth century.,

The principal manuscripts are:

• The Lucca MS, Lucca, Biblioteca Capitolare Feliniana, Codex 490, the oldest witness, c.800.
• The Sélestat MS, Sélestat, Bibliothèque Humaniste, MS 17. A very full yet old witness, early ninth century.
• The Codex Matritensis ('Madrid codex'), Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS A.16 (Was: MS A.19), c.1130.
• The Phillipps-Corning Manuscript, Corning Museum of Glass, MS 5 , late twelfth century, perhaps the fullest collection.

These are simply among the fullest witnesses

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

 - there are dozens more that preserve extracts.

Title

The title, Mappae clavicula, is absurd, translating approximately as 'the little key to the small cloth'. The best explanation is that it is a mis-translation from a Greek original, in which χειρόκμητον ('knack' or 'trick of the trade') was mis-read as χειρόμακτρον ('hand-towel'). This is consistent with the observation that certain recipes derive from the Greek technical papyri, the Leyden papyrus X

Leyden papyrus X

The Leyden papyrus X is a papyrus codex written in Greek at about the end of the 3rd century A.D. or perhaps around 250 A.D. and buried with its owner, and today preserved at Leiden in the Netherlands. It contains alchemical texts, mostly concerned with making dyes and alloys which can be made to...

 and the Stockholm papyrus

Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis

The Papyrus Graecus Holmiensis, which is also known as the Stockholm Papyrus, dates from c. 300 AD and contains craft recipes written in Demotic Greek. The Stockholm papyrus has 154 recipes for dying, coloring gemstones, cleaning pearls, and imitation gold and silver...

.

Published Latin Edition

Sir Thomas Phillipps, "A transcript of a manuscript treatise on the preparation of pigments, and on various processes of the decorative arts practised during the Middle Ages, written in the twelfth century, and entitled Mappae Clavicula." Published in journal Archaeologia, volume XXXII, pages 183–244, year 1847. Downloadable at Archive.org.

English translation

Smith, C. S. and J. G. Hawthorne (1974) ‘Mappae Clavicula: A Little Key to the World of Medieval Techniques’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society: Held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge (new series) 64 (4) [occupies whole issue].

External links

• More substantial article in Italian Wikipedia.
• Mappae Clavicula (in Latin)