Palimpsest Bibliography

There are two general publications on the book. For the manuscript specialist:

Volume 1
The Archimedes Palimpsest is the name given to a Byzantine prayer-book which was written over a number of earlier manuscripts, including three unique examples containing 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 comprising the Palimpsest. It will be of interest to manuscript scholars, classicists and historians of science.

Volume 2
The Archimedes Palimpsest is the name given to a Byzantine prayer-book which was written over a number of earlier manuscripts. This volume provides colour images and transcriptions of three of the texts recovered from it. Pride of place goes to the treatises of Archimedes, including the only Greek version of Floating Bodies, and the unique copies of Method and Stomachion. This transcription provides many different readings from those made by Heiberg from what he termed Codex C in his edition of the works of Archimedes of 1910–1915. Secondly, fragments of two previously unattested speeches by the Athenian orator Hyperides, which are the only Hyperides texts ever to have been found in a codex. Thirdly, a fragment from an otherwise unknown commentary on Aristotle's Categories. In each case advanced image-processing techniques have been used to create the images, in order to make the text underneath legible.

A second publication is designed for the general reader:

Jane L. Down, Gregory S. Young, R. Scott Williams and Maureen A. MacDonald. "Analysis of the Archimedes Palimpsest", in Vincent Daniels, Alan Donnithorne and Perry Smith (eds.), Works of Art on Paper, Books, Documents and Photographs: The International Institute for Conservation, Contributions to the Baltimore Congress, 2-6 September 2002, London 2002, pp.52-58.

Roger L. Easton, Jr, Keith T. Knox., William A. Christens-Barry: Multispectral imaging of the Archimedes palimpsest. In: Proceedings of 32nd Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (IEEE-AIPR’03), pp. 111–116 (2003)

Roger Easton and William Noel "The Multispectral Imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest", Gazette du Livre Médiévale, 45, 2004, pp.39-49.

Keith Knox, Charles Dickinson, Lichao Wei, Roger L. Easton, Jr., and Robert Johnston, "Multispectral Imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest," Proceedings of IS&T PICS Conference, Montreal, 2001, pp. 206-210.

Keith T. Knox, Roger L. Easton, Jr.: Recovery of lost writings on historical manuscripts with ultraviolet illumination. In: Fifth International Symposium on Multispectral Color Science (Part of PICS 2003 Conference), Rochester, NY, pp. 301–306 (2003)

Keith T. Knox, Roger L. Easton, Jr., and William A. Christens-Barry, "Multispectral Imaging of the Archimedes Palimpsest," 2003 AMOS Conference, Maui, Hawaii: Air Force Maui Optical & Supercomputing Site, Sept. (2003)

Keith Knox, "Enhancement of overwritten text in the Archimedes Palimpsest,'' in Computer Image Analysis in the Study of Art (D. G. Stork and J. Coddington), San Jose, California, Proc. SPIE, vol. 6810, 2007.

Keith T. Knox, Roger L. Easton, Jr., and William A. Christens-Barry, "Image Restoration of Damaged or Erased Manuscripts", European Signal Processing Conference (Lausanne, 2008)

J. Lowden, "Forging an Image of Byzantium", in A. Eastmond & L. James (edd.), Icon and word: the power of images in Byzantium (London 2003) pp. 233-60.

Reviel Netz, Ken Saito and Natalie Tchernetska, "A New Reading of Method Proposition 14: Preliminary Evidence from the Archimedes Palimpsest (Part 1)", Sciamus 2, 2001, pp.9-29

Reviel Netz, Ken Saito and Natalie Tchernetska, "A New Reading of Method Proposition 14: Preliminary Evidence from the Archimedes Palimpsest (Part 2)", Sciamus 3, 2002, pp.109-25.

Reviel Netz, Fabio Acerbi and Nigel Wilson, "Towards a Reconstruction of Archimedes’ Stomachion", Sciamus 5, 2004, pp.67-99.

Reviel Netz, Archimedes: Translation and Commentary, with a Critical Edition of the Diagrams and a Translation of Eutocius’ commentaries, Vol. I: The Sphere and the Cylinder. Cambridge University Press 2004.

Reviel Netz, Archimedes: Translation and Commentary, with a Critical Edition of the Diagrams and a Translation of Eutocius’ commentaries, Vol. II: Advanced Geometrical Works. Cambridge University Press [forthcoming].

Reviel Netz, Archimedes: Translation and Commentary, with a Critical Edition of the Diagrams and a Translation of Eutocius’ commentaries, Vol. III: The Mathematical-Physical Works. Cambridge University Press [forthcoming].

Reviel Netz, Archimedes and Mar Saba: a Preliminary Notice. The Sabaite Heritage: The Sabaite Factor in the Orthodox Church: Monastic life, Liturgy, Theology, Literature, Art and Archaeology 195-199, ed. J. Patrich.

Reviel Netz, The Origin of Mathematical Physics: New Light on an Old Question. Physics Today, June 2000 31-36.

Reviel Netz and William Noel, The Archimedes Codex, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007.

William Noel, "The Archimedes Palimpsest, Old Science Meets New Science," Proceedings of IS&T PICS Conference, Montreal, 2001, pp. 199-201, 2001.

Stefano Parenti, The Liturgical Tradition of the Euchologion "of Archimedes", Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, IIIs. 2 (2005)(but 2006),pp.69-87.

Abigail Quandt, "The Archimedes Palimpsest: Conservation Treatment, Digital Imaging and Transcription of a Rare Mediaeval Manuscript", in Vincent Daniels, Alan Donnithorne and Perry Smith (eds.), Works of Art on Paper, Books, Documents and Photographs: The International Institute for Conservation, Contributions to the Baltimore Congress, 2-6 September 2002, London 2002, pp.165-170.

N. Tchernetska, "New Fragments of Hyperides from the Archimedes Palimpsest", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 154, 2005, pp.1-6.

N. Tchernetska, E Handley, C. Austin, L. Horváth, "New Readings in the Fragment of Hyperides’ Against Timandros from the Archimedes Palimpsest", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 162, 2007, pp.1-4.

Michael B. Toth, Roger Easton, Jr., Bill Christens-Barry, "Eureka! Dublin Core Based Metadata Supports the Archimedes Palimpsest Manuscript Imaging Program", Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Colima, Mexico. October 3-6, 2006, pp.120-129.

Michael B. Toth, "Management of Digital Archives for Integrated Web Access to Scientific and Cultural Information", Proceedings of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology Archiving Conference, Arlington, Virginia, May 21-24, 2007, pp.175-178.

Michael B. Toth, Doug Emery, "Applying DCMI Elements to Digital Images and Text in the Archimedes Palimpset Program", DC2008: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications (Berlin, Germany, 2008). [forthcoming]

Derek Walvoord, Roger Easton, Jr., "Digital Transcription of the Archimedes Palimpsest", IEEE Signal Processing Magazine p. 100-104, July 2008

Nigel Wilson, "Archimedes: the Palimpsest and the Tradition", Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2, 1999, pp.89-101.

Nigel Wilson, The Archimedes Palimpsest: A Progress Report", in A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at The Walters Art Museum and Essays in honor of Gary Vikan (Journal of the Walters Art Museum, 62, 2004), pp.61-68

Nigel Wilson, "The secrets of palimpsests" in L’Erasmo 25 (2005) pp. 70-75

Nigel Wilson, "Archimedes: the palimpsest and the tradition" in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 92 (1999) pp.89-101.

Gregory Young, "Quantitative Image Analysis in Microscopical Thermal Stability Measurements", Canadian Conservation Institute Newsletter, 31, June 2003, pp.10-11.

Palimpsest Bibliography

Further Reading