X-Raying Archimedes

[Tuckerfan]

Yet more ancient texts brought to light.

An early transcription of Archimedes’ mathematical theories has been brought to light through the probing of high-intensity X-rays.

The text contains part of the Method of Mechanical Theorems, one of Archimedes’ most important works, which was probably copied out by a scribe in the tenth century. The parchment on which it was written was later scraped down and reused as pages in a thirteenth century prayer book, producing a document known as a palimpsest (which comes from the Greek, meaning ‘rubbed smooth again’).

Scholars discovered the text concealed in this book as early as 1906. Since then, much of the text has been read, using everything from magnifying glasses to ultraviolet light, which highlights the hidden ink.

But some of the text has been solidly obscured by some twentieth-century forgeries of medieval art that were slapped on top of a few pages. So researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, decided to use X-rays to peer through this modern ink. Iron pigment in the original ink fluoresced when hit by the X-rays, allowing researchers to see the text for the first time.