Synopsis:
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.
About the Authors:
Reviel Netz is Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, by courtesy, at Stanford University. His books, most published by Cambridge University Press, include The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: A Study in Cognitive History (1999, Runciman Award), The Transformation of Early Mediterranean Mathematics: From Problems to Equations (2004) and Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic (2009). He is also engaged in a translation of and commentary on the complete works of Archimedes, the first volume of which, The Two Books on Sphere and Cylinder, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2004. His popular book on the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, The Archimedes Codex (co-authored with William Noel, Neumann Prize), was published in 2007 and has been translated into twenty languages.
William Noel is Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and Director of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project. His popular book, The Archimedes Codex (co-authored with Reviel Netz, Neumann Prize), was published in 2007 and has been translated into twenty languages. He is a member of the Faculty of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia and is Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Noel received his doctorate from Cambridge University in 1993 and has published widely on European manuscript illumination in the period 800 to 1300 and on the Archimedes Palimpsest.
Nigel Wilson is a Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow and Tutor (Emeritus) at Lincoln College, Oxford. He has had long experience of research on Greek manuscripts and editing texts. His works include Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (with L. D. Reynolds, 3rd edition 1991) and Scholars of Byzantium (revised edition 1996).
Natalie Tchernetska is a leading manuscript scholar specialising in Greek palimpsests. Educated in Riga, St Petersburg and Geneva, she conducted research in Rome and Hamburg and completed her PhD at Cambridge University. In the late 1990s, she was one of the first manuscript scholars worldwide to venture into the field of digital imaging. In 2002, it was she who discovered and identified fragments of two speeches of Hyperides from the Archimedes Palimpsest, the discovery that radically changed our view on survival of Hyperides in Byzantium.
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