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Red inks (II): Writing in blood

Red inks (II): Writing in blood
2003. Baghdad, Iraq. The «Blood Qur’an». In the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein donated blood for three years to write the 605 pages of the Qur’an exhibited in the «Mother of All Battles» mosque in Umm al-Maarik. This is not an isolated case; the copying of sacred texts with the blood of an offerer is a ritual practice associated with an act of intense self-sacrificial asceticism attested to in a variety of cultures. Photo by Scott Peterson (2003) © Getty Images
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Red inks (II): Writing in blood

II Ink colours

No other substance has ever represented the power of life and death like blood. Therefore, regardless of cultural context, blood is a substance that has always had, and continues to have, an undeniable symbolic and spiritual value. Perhaps this is why ancient cultures held ambivalent attitudes towards it. Blood, when it transcends the natural boundaries of the body, can be perceived as a form of social and ritual danger. However, as a vital fluid, it is, at the same time, sacred and capable of warding off this danger and the impurity it represents. This duality explains its ritual use in ancient Mediterranean cultures in offerings, sprinkling and even in the writing of ritual texts. In fact, in Greco-Egyptian magic, blood is a common means of writing, either on its own or as an ingredient in ink:

«To obtain an oracle, write on a laurel leaf with myrrh mixed with the blood of someone who has suffered a violent death.» (GEMF 57 / PGM IV 2210)

In this context, blood has the ability to «activate» the text, giving the words a vital force that ordinary ink has not.

However, caution must be exercised regarding the use of «blood» in rituals, such as those handed down in the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, as some references to animal blood refer to quite different substances. One example is the haimadrakónteion, «snake’s blood». Despite its name, this is the red sap of certain plants:

« [On the snake plant or drakónteion] From the crushed seeds of this plant (a substance) is obtained which is called «blood of the snake plant» because it is red.» (Cyranides 1.4.8)