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The ink used by the ancients appears to have been what is termed in art a “body color,” or a more solid medium than is at present used, and similar to what is used by the modern Chinese.

Subsequently, lamp-black, or the black taken from burnt ivory, and soot from furnaces and baths, according to Pliny and others, formed the basis of the ink used by old writers.

It has also been conjectured that the black liquor of the scuttle-fish was frequently employed.11 Of whatever ingredients it was made, it is certain, from chemical analysis, from the blackness and solidity in the most ancient manuscripts, and from inkstands found at Herculaneum, in which the ink appears like thick oil, that the ink then made was much more opaque, as well as encaustic, than what is used at present. Inks red, purple, and blue, and also gold and silver inks were much used; the red was made from vermilion, cinnabar, and carmine; the purple from the murex, one sort of which, named the purple encaustic, was set apart for the sole use of the emperors. Golden ink was used by the Greeks much more than by the Romans. The manufacture of both gold and silver ink was an extensive and lucrative business in the Middle Ages. Another distinct business was that of inscribing the titles, capitals, as well as emphatic words, in colored and gold and silver inks.