The Archimedes Palimpsest Project

The Archimedes Palimpsest 

http://archimedespalimpsest.org/

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a medieval parchment manuscript, containing 174 parchment folios. As it exists now, the manuscript is a prayer book. This prayer book was completed by April 1229, almost certainly in Constantinople. However, to make their prayer book, the scribes used parchment that had already been used for the writings of other books. Firstly, and most importantly, they used a book containing at least seven treatises by Archimedes.
The manuscript was discovered in 1906 by J.L. Heiberg and it was in private hands throughout much of the twentieth century. The manuscript was bought at auction by an anonymous American collector who deposited the book at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (USA), for conservation, imaging, and scholarly study, in January 1999. A very interesting website was designed to give information on the Palimpsest and on the progress of the project in general.


"The Archimedes Palimpsest Project" Video (2006, 1h 4m long):