Text reveals more ancient secrets
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Experts are “lost for words” to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment.
Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.
But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text – a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle.
Project director William Noel called it a “sensational find”.
The prayer book was written in the 13th Century by a scribe called John Myronas.
But instead of using fresh parchment for his work, he employed pages from five existing books. Dr Noel, curator of manuscripts at the US-based Walters Art Museum and a co-author of a forthcoming book on the Archimedes Palimpsest, said: “It’s a rather brutal process, but it means you can reuse parchment if you are short of it.
“You take books off shelves, you scrub off the text, you cut them up and you make a new book.”
In 1906 it came to light that one of the books recycled to form the medieval manuscript contained a unique work by Archimedes.
And in 2002, modern imaging technology not only provided a clearer view of this famous mathematician’s words, but it also revealed another text – the only known manuscript of Hyperides, an Athenian politician from the 4th Century BC.
“At this point you start thinking striking one palimpsest is gold, and striking two is utterly astonishing. But then something even more extraordinary happened,” Dr Noel told the BBC News website.
One of the recycled books was proving extremely difficult to read, explained Roger Easton, a professor of imaging science at Rochester Institute of Technology, US.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6591221.stm