The Mappae clavicula is a medieval Latin 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, and contains items traceable to earlier Classical texts and to the Stockholm papyrus and Leiden Papyrus X. 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 manuscripts.[1]
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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.,[2][3]
The principal manuscripts are:
These are simply among the fullest witnesses - there are dozens more that preserve extracts.[4]
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').[5] This is consistent with the observation that certain recipes derive from the Greek technical papyri, the Leyden papyrus X and the Stockholm papyrus.
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.
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].