SALE The Archimedes Palimpsest, Volume 1: Catalogue and Commentary

This book is unused and unread. It has some cosmetic imperfections such as scuffing, creasing or fading. It may be shop-soiled. 

This book cannot be discounted further and it may be stamped 'damaged'.

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.

• Contains a full discussion of the conservation of the Archimedes Palimpsest, which is an important case study for the conservation of all badly degraded parchment documents
• Includes a full history of the Archimedes Palimpsest itself, which will be of great value to medieval and modern historians interested in the transmission of texts
• Discusses in detail the imaging of ancient documents, explaining the science behind the various available techniques