The Archimedes Palimpsest

Authoritative account of the ten years of conservation, imaging and scholarship on the world's greatest palimpsest.

Reviel Netz (Edited by), William Noel (Edited by), Nigel Wilson (Edited by), Natalie Tchernetska (Edited by)

9781107014572, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 November 2011

350 pages, 58 b/w illus. 127 colour illus.
34.5 x 25.1 x 4 cm, 2.5 kg

'There is enormous expectation in the scholarly community about the arrival of the first copies of a new book from Cambridge University Press, which contains full color images of the palimpsest, a technical account of how the images were made and complete transcriptions of the texts. It's too early to say whether this will revolutionize our understanding of Greek mathematics, but it will contain new texts thought to have been lost forever by the Greek orator Hyperides and the most complete versions of several works by Archimedes, including two books which exist only in this manuscript. This is the iceberg in full view, a massive tome that took more than a decade to produce, recovering - perhaps as fully as can ever be hoped - texts that miraculously escaped the oblivion of decay and destruction.' The Washington Post

The Archimedes Palimpsest is the name given to a Byzantine prayer book that was written over a number of earlier manuscripts, including one that contained two unique works by Archimedes, unquestionably the greatest mathematician of antiquity. Sold at auction in 1998, it has since been the subject of a privately funded project to conserve, image, and transcribe its texts. In this volume the scientists, conservators, classicists, and historians involved in the project discuss in full their techniques and their discoveries. These include new speeches by the classical Athenian orator Hyperides, a lost commentary on Aristotle's Categories from the second or third century AD, and substantial re-readings and reinterpretations of the works by Archimedes. The book discusses the pioneering imaging and post-processing techniques used to reveal the texts, and includes detailed codicological descriptions of all eight manuscripts that constitute the Palimpsest. It will be of interest to manuscript scholars, conservators, classicists, and historians of science.

Introduction: the Archimedes Palimpsest project William Noel
Part I. The Manuscripts: Part II. History: 1. The making of the Euchologion Abigail Quandt
2. The strange and eventful history of the Archimedes Palimpsest John Lowden
3. Itinera Archimedea: on Heiberg in Constantinople and Archimedes in Copenhagen Erik Petersen
Part III. Conservation: 4. Conserving the Archimedes Palimpsest Abigail Quandt
Part IV. The Digital Palimpsest: 5. Imaging and image-processing techniques William A. Christens-Barry, Roger L. Easton, Jr and Keith T. Knox
6. Imaging with x-ray fluorescence Uwe Bergmann
7. The Palimpsest data set Doug Emery, Alex Lee and Michael Toth
Part V. The Texts: 8. The Palimpsest in context Natalie Tchernetska and Nigel Wilson
9. The place of Codex C in Archimedes scholarship Reviel Netz
Appendix: concordance of foliations.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], History of mathematics [PBX], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Conservation, restoration & care of artworks [ABC]