yellow, stained British Library pages are in better shape than white parchment Leipzig pages

[Steven Avery]

Digitising the Hand-Written Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus, its History and Modern Presentation (2007)
Ekkehard Henschke
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.601.6836&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The leaves have survived in different conditions. The dry climate in the Sinai desert may have helped to preserve them well for centuries. But the varying hot, cold and humid conditions in Leipzig produced a lot of damage, arising especially from oxidisation of the ink. Because of this, some characters have fallen out of some of the leaves and have thereby caused gaps in the text. The leaves were stored in a walk-in safe with special air-conditioning only after 1998, when the first part of the main library building, which had been in ruins since the end of the Second World War, was reconstructed. Like many other valuable manuscripts and books which were stored in old castles and fortresses during the war, this part of the Codex had suffered from humidity. The Leipzig folios had been bound into one volume in Tischendorf's time, so this binding was undone in 2004. The leaves owned by the British Library are in a better state. But all these different parts of the Codex have to be examined for conservation and preservation purposes.

Ekkehard Henschke, “Digitising the Hand-Written Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus, Its History and Modern Presentation”. Libri 57.1 (2007): 45-51.

 

[Steven Avery]

"The Leipzig folios had been bound into one volume in Tischendorf’s time, so this binding was undone in 2004".

No reference given, probably the book above.