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News

News: May/June 2007

Ancient Aristotle commentary discovered • Robot rights call rebuffed • Philosophers of wine hold popular gathering — News reports by Sue Roberts

Palimpsest treasure hunt

Over the past hundred years, a 13th century prayer book known as the Archimedes Palimpsest has yielded up fascinating ‘buried texts’ hidden in its pages. Though ‘recycling’ may be a buzz word right now, our ancestors frequently erased and re-used existing parchments to create new manuscripts. In this instance it appears that the scribe responsible scrubbed clean the pages of five older books to create the prayer book. In 1906 it came to light that one of these older books was a previously unknown work by Archimedes. By 2002 it had become possible to gain a clearer view of this important text as a result of modern imaging technology, which also revealed a second text, the only known manuscript by Hyperides, a 4th Century BC Athenian politician.

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