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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Progress on the Archimedes Palimpsest


From BBC
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.
read the rest

Similar story from National Greographic
News stories on a Paper read at the
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

April 25 – 27, 2007

Benjamin Franklin Hall

427 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia

WILLIAM NOEL
Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books
Walters Art Museum , Baltimore , MD
and
ROGER L. EASTON, JR.
Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
Infinite Possibilities: Eight Years of Study of the Archimedes Palimpsest

Archimedes Palimpsest homepage

video of a "Google Talk" by Will Noel Roger L. Easton, Jr. Michael B. Toth

ABSTRACT The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 10th Century medieval manuscript that is the subject of an ongoing technical, scientific and conservation effort at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1999, the multidisciplinary team has been disbinding, conserving, imaging, analyzing, transcribing and studying the 174 parchment folios – yielding approximately 400Gb of data to date. The Palimpsest, which the team affectionately calls “Archie,” includes at least seven treatises by Archimedes: The only copies of two of his Treatises, /The Method/ and /Stomachion/; the only copy in Greek of /On Floating Bodies;/ and copies of the /Equilibrium of Planes/, /Spiral Lines/, /The Measurement of the Circle/, and /Sphere and Cylinder/. It also contains 10 pages of text by the 4th century B.C. Attic Greek orator Hyperides; six folios from a Neo-Platonic philosophical text that has yet to be identified, but may be commentaries on Aristotle; four folios from a liturgical book; and twelve pages from two different books, the text of which has yet to be deciphered. «

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

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