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The Scholarship of the Palimpsest
The Archimedes Palimpsest: A Progress Report
by Nigel Wilson of Lincoln College Oxford
What was more important was that with the ultra-violet lamp the few remaining gaps in the transcription could be filled. There was therefore every reason to hope that in passages where Heiberg had been unable to transcribe satisfactorily a substantially better text might be obtained. But though the location of the manuscript of the manuscript was known, the owners refused access. A further problem came to light: owing to inadequate storage conditions mildew had done serious damage to the volume. The owners sought expert advice, but it is unclear what measures were taken to arrest the damage. After some considerable time the family, which had made unsuccessful efforts to sell the MS by private treaty to the Biblioth�que Nationale and the British Library, sent it for auction, and at Christie's in New York on 29 October 1998 it fetched $2,000,000. The present owner has deposited the palimpsest at the Walters Art Museum for conservation and study, and one of the most fascinating scholarly projects imaginable is now well advanced.
The MS has a number of secrets to reveal. The upper script is a Euchologion, a collection of prayers for various occasions, copied probably at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century; there is what seems to be a later note of possession on folio 1 verso, datable to A.D. 1229.5 Further study of the individual items in this liturgical collection may conceivably give a clue as to its place of origin; the handwriting has recently been described as characteristic of the Otranto district of Apulia in the heel of Italy, but with the proviso that identification of a local style does not guarantee origin in that same locality, because scribes sometimes travelled or emigrated.6 Heiberg had inferred from a now lost possession note of the Lavra of St Saba near Jerusalem that the palimpsest was produced there.7 That would be a legitimate inference if the note had been in the same hand as the text of the Euchologion. But it was not; the printed catalogue is explicit in stating that the paper leaf in question (184) was written at the end of the sixteenth century, long after the making of the palimpsest, and so this note of possession gives no more than feeble support to Heiberg's suggestion. The fact is that we do not yet know where the palimpsesting took place.
The scribe of the prayer-book used parchment taken from several MSS that had been discarded, whether because of damage or because they were thought to have no value any longer. Much the most substantial contribution came from the Archimedes, but there are leaves taken from other books, and it will be convenient at this point to enumerate those which have so far been identified as coming from other MSS.
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5 For this, and also an important discussion of the four miniatures that have been added to the MS see J. Lowden in A. Eastmond & L. James (edd.), Icon and word: the power of images in Byzantium (London 2003) pp. 233-60.
6 S. Luc�, Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 66 (1999) p.57.
7 Op.cit. III p.lxxxviii.