Coverup

Math inaugurates Science. Science grows technology. Technology, in turn, rediscovers math.

Lost works by the ancient scholar Archimedes have been recovered from a much battered medieval manuscript using technology from atom smashers and NASA satellites. Physicists scanning a book known as the Archimedes Palimpsest today unveiled a new page from the mathematician's On Floating Bodies. Previously, the work was known only from an incomplete Latin translation

The 10th century manuscript, recorded in Constantinople, contained 3 treatises: 2 previously lost and a third known incompletely. On Floating Bodies, the 'Eureka!' treatise, is this third one although no drawings of Archimedes running through the Streets of Alexandria naked have been discovered in the text yet. Researchers hope to settle this long-standing controversy.

In 1204, upon the sacking of Constantinople in the crusades, the parchment pages were scraped of their writings and a prayer book made from them. Knowledge clearly being unnecessary - even dangerous - when compared to inspiring the fear of God.

Medieval manuscripts are constructed like a whole series of newspaper. So each leaf has its conjoint, just as the front page of a news paper is attached to the back page. One should therefore imagine the leaves of the 5 manuscripts as double-sheets, lying in a pile, without any text. To make the prayer book, these leaves were split down the middle, rotated ninety degrees, and than refolded to make further double sheets that were half the size. The scribes then added their prayer book text, which is at ninety degrees to the now almost indecipherable erased writings.

What you see when you open the Archimedes palimpsest therefore, is not a mathematical text, or even a piece of Greek oratory, but a prayer book. Only occasionally can one just discern, at right angles to the prayer book text, the erased writings that the current project is attempting to recover.

The second link is to the project's website and is filled with history and images from the scanning (all made immediately public for scholars - free of charge). It's well worth an extended visit.