X-Rays Reveal Archimedes Secrets

[Theodosius the Great]

X-Rays Reveal Archimedes Secrets

Theo

[D B Campbell]

This has apparently been going on for quite some time.
See archimedespalimpsest.org/ for full details.

[Eleatic Guest]

Wow. I completely absorbed the whole web site in one gulp! Discoveries like these totally fascinate me, I pray that modern science can help us making more such findings, blessed be parchment. Laudes awarded.

Now a question: Is there any book or online source which traces the spatiotemporal path of extant ancient literature, that is which shows from which source (Greek, Latin, Arabic) which work has come to us?

[Eleatic Guest]

PS:

The public can watch the researchers as they reveal the glowing ancient text during a live webcast at 2300 GMT on 4 August.

Do not miss it. 8)

[conon394]

online source which traces the spatiotemporal path of extant ancient literature, that is which shows from which source (Greek, Latin, Arabic) which work has come to us?

Ever since the dot-compost online sources have been rather thin and getting rarer. When is the last time you saw a whole new work go up at Perseus for example?

Rather than source information personally I would love to see the IG go online, but I doubt it will ever happen…

EDIT: Interesting in all the media stories about new Archimedes texts, I’m disappointed that I heard not a single word to the effect that they also have at least 10 new pages of Hyperides. Kill some Romans with nifty machines, and everyone remembers you, defend democracy against Alexander’s importation of absolutism and be forgotten

[Robert Vermaat]

And don't forget that in Oxford they are still working on 500.000 papyrus fragments collected somewhere between 1880 and 1930, of which 5% is researched (the bigger ones) and 1% published!
With the new technique described in the article, next thing they'll research is a load of payrus masks, which the researchers are sure one were made from layers upon layers of whole texts... Who knows what lost books will turn up?

[Eleatic Guest]

And don't forget that in Oxford they are still working on 500.000 papyrus fragments collected somewhere between 1880 and 1930, of which 5% is researched (the bigger ones) and 1% published!

Cool, never heard of those! And add to them the tens of thousands Mesopotamian cuneiforms still waiting in European museum basements for a proper clasification and decipherment. Ok, while they might not have developed then proper historiography and philosophy, these texts still could tell us a lot about these people and their life.

It is a sad thing though, that out of climatical reasons Papyri only survived in Egypt in quantity, if we knew about other Roman provinces what we knew now of Egypt, our knowledge about the Roman world would probably triple.

On the other hand, we can call ourselves lucky that the ancients used parchment from an early time on, take a look at China, where Bamboo strips only survived in the arid northern and north-western frontier, buried in the sand. Not to mention the Indians who made the fateful decision to write on easily decomposable palm tree leaves: Result: Innumerable Indian classical works are lost forever and the holes in the historical transmission are so great that much of Indian history comes as patchy, loosely related stories to us to the point that the general narrative is often not reconstructable anymore.

Then again, Roman history also becomes increasing like this from the 3rd century onwards.

[Robert Vermaat]

It is a sad thing though, that out of climatical reasons Papyri only survived in Egypt in quantity, if we knew about other Roman provinces what we knew now of Egypt, our knowledge about the Roman world would probably triple.

Plus keep in mind that these researchers literally fought aginst the clock because rural Egyptians had come to appreciate ancient sites for those papyrus fragments - they advertised them in fact as great fertilizer! hock:

[floofthegoof]

Maybe someday I can read those lost books of Livy!

[hoplite14gr]

I think I saw the "X-Rays Reveal Archimedes Secrets" on TV. Yes some times TV can be educational!

GIRASKO AEI DIDASKOMENOS - I learn as I grow old
Is just that life is not enough when it comes to learn new things :evil:

Kind regards

[Arthes]

"It's like receiving a fax from the 3rd Century BC,"
Well......maybe not impossible after all.... :wink:

[Theodosius the Great]

Another manuscript partially deciphered with the help of X-Rays :

Between the lines: A rare Ancient Greek text is found


Dates to the conquest of Athens by Philip of Macedon.



Theo

[Endre Fodstad]

This has apparently been going on for quite some time.

Yep. Conservators and Conservations Scientists have been using the method for at least 20 years that I know of. It's just a matter of fine-tuning the x-ray machine. It became considerably easier when we got digitalized x-ray machines, though - you don't have to waste 15 exposures (1-2 minutes exposure, 10-15 minutes to develop each: that makes 3-4 hours (typically more) for each picture) to find the result; all you've got to be careful about is potential pigment damage from the x-rays, but that is seldom a big problem.

Often, the media gets whiffs of "the miracles of science" decades after the methods came into use.

[Ioannis]

Another manuscript partially deciphered with the help of X-Rays :

Between the lines: A rare Ancient Greek text is found


Dates to the conquest of Athens by Philip of Macedon.



Theo

Theo, it's not a different manuscript. The work of Hyperides is also included in the Archimedes Palimpsest.

[Robert Vermaat]

Another manuscript partially deciphered with the help of X-Rays :
Between the lines: A rare Ancient Greek text is found

Dates to the conquest of Athens by Philip of Macedon.

Theo, it's not a different manuscript. The work of Hyperides is also included in the Archimedes Palimpsest.

Actually, it is. The monks used another ancient manuscript as material for that part of their palimpsest. So in fact they used the vellum of several MSS, one more of which has now been recovered.