Jots & Tittles

Wringing Out the Word

When the highest floodwaters in two centuries wreaked havoc on the Czech capital of Prague last August, casualties included one extremely rare (and extremely valuable) Bible, housed in a branch of the city’s municipal library just a few blocks from the overflowing Vltava River. Fortunately, the Bible is well on the way to being saved, through a mixture of high- and low-tech methods borrowed from the food industry.

The 1488 Prague Bible is one of the earliest printed books (published only decades after the invention of the printing press) and also the first complete Czech translation of the Bible. There are only a few copies still in existence, each one unique because of its hand-painted illustrations.

After the flood the Bible was quickly rushed—along with thousands of other waterlogged documents (including original Mozart scores)—to a local freezer normally used for vegetables. Freezing books, like freezing produce, keeps them from rotting while they await restoration.

The method now being used to dry out the soggy Bible also originated in the food industry: vacuum packing, which is used to package coffee, lunch meats and other perishables you buy at the local grocery. Jana Dvoráková, a restorer from the Czech National Library who has been working on the project since November 2002, used a vacuum-packing machine to seal the Bible, along with absorbent paper, in plastic. The vacuum created inside the plastic bag draws water out of the book and into the paper. She has had to repeat this process many times, and even break the book apart into sections to speed up the process.