This is fascinating stuff! It’s amazing to me that the book survived, much less is readable (after 9 years!)
This is about an ancient book called The Archimedes Codex, bought for $2.2 million in October, 1998, at an auction in New York City by an anonymous collector who sent it to the Walters Art Museum, here to be restored, conserved, and probed for its content. It was thought to contain mathematical theses conceived by the genius of Syracuse (287-212 BC), whose name it bears, ideas not found anywhere else in the world.
The Walters faced a daunting task: what arrived was a clump of folios, crushed, torn, punctured by worm holes, in the inflexible grip of old carpenter’s glue, charred at its edges, and covered with mold and water stains.
It’s a miracle it still exists.
It took four years just to remove the glue, and open the book sufficiently to allow experts on ancient Greek texts to access much of its content and, with the help of ultra sophisticated imaging systems, to read it.
Modern technology is opening its information to us.
Imagine being the man who is in charge of this (for nine years).
The Archimedes texts were copied in the 10th century by an unknown scribe in Constantinople, then a major center of the Christian world eventually to become a center of the Islamic world. Three centuries later, another scribe washed, scraped, and otherwise tried to remove the text from the book’s parchment. This person undid the book, rebound it in the opposite direction, then, on the imperfectly cleared pages, wrote his Christian prayers in Greek over the original text, which was also in Greek, and still discernible in a faint rust-colored thread running beneath. This procedure was common in medieval times: Parchment was scarce. Thus, the Archimedes Codex became a palimpsest, a twice-used book.
The findings gleaned from it have raised Archimedes’s status as a thinker higher than anyone might have expected. Noel describes him as “the most important scientist who ever lived.”
Karin
Related Posts -
Take time for yourself Take time for yourself During the holiday season it is so easy to put yourself last, while you run in all directions getting everything organized for everyone else's holiday! Take time for yourself What have... - Trouble with Harry Potter Hallows audio book Tonight I was ripping in the audio book into my MP3 player. Disc 6 ends with Chapter 13e Disc 7 beings with Chapter 13i it is missing 13f, 13g, and 13h. Sure enough, I went...
- A little bit about patience I've been thinking that some experiences take patience to the nth degree. Current estimates for new Chinese adoptions are running into the 2 yrs to 36 mos range. I thought our wait of 18 mos...
- 100 Thing challenge What do you think, could you do it? I have to admit I've pared down some this week -- as have my kids without even being asked! -- and I've given away clothes and other...
-
The Land of Mango Sunsets (book) Today we have a guest writer reviewing for us. I've not read this book, but it will definitely go on my to-read list. If you have read the book, or any by this author, how...
Related Websites - Book Review: World Atlas of Golf - The Greatest Courses and How They are Played Mark Rowlinson The World Atlas of Golf was first published more than 30 years ago, and since then, each and every addition has revealed to golfers the...
- Kwanzaa - The Other Christmas [/caption] Kwanzaa is a weeklong celebration held in the United States honoring universal African heritage and culture, marked by participants lighting a kinara (candle holder)....
- Book Review: The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson is not your typical economic commentator. He’s not an economist, or journalist, or even a guy with an MBA. He’s a historian; a...
- The Importance Of Utilizing Key-Words In Web Page Titles It is recommended to use keywords in page titles itself. This title tag is different from the Meta tag, but it is well worth considering...
- New diseases emerge at alarming rate:
The World Health Report 2007 The World Health Organization released its annual report today, with emphasis on the changing world situation regarding communicable diseases. In her report, Inspector General Dr....
- Splash Pages Original Comic Art Comics Collectibles
- Greek Coins Ancient Coins Paper Money
- Greek Antiquities Antiques
Categories:
2 comments ↓
It’s a fascinating albeit terribly taxing process! There has to be monitoring through an UV light to access possible scrible under the materials that cover it ifa pelimpsest (dirt, glue, other writing etc), then very careful “cleaning”, not to mention the linguistic process of hypothesizing what the missing letters/words are and accessing the continuum of sentences…
Same happened more or less with Dead Sea manuscripts, Judas’s gospel etc.
I think it would be too taxing for me!
Leave a Comment