2023/10/17 by Claudia Rapp, Giulia Rossetto, Jana Grusková +1 · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1553/978oeaw91575
openalex publication_date 2023/10/17 · openalex created_date 2023/10/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
The study of palimpsest manuscripts has a long tradition and has led to spectacular discoveries of new texts or new text versions. Recent decades have seen the development of advanced non-destructive methods of multispectral imaging and computer-based image processing. The focus of such research have been individual manuscripts, such as the Archimedes palimpsest that was studied in Baltimore, or the Dexippos fragments in Vienna. The Sinai Palimpsests Project broke new ground by studying for the first time a collection of palimpsest manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in the library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine in the Sinai (Egypt). The erased layers preserve texts in eleven languages of the Christian Orient. An international team of scholars has identified numerous new texts or versions of texts, often in very early scripts. This volume has its origin in a conference that was held in Vienna in 2018, where the results of the Sinai Palimpsests Project were presented, along with the advances in image capture and image processing that have made them possible. Additional contributions about current projects in the study of palimpsests, also including Jewish and Muslim text traditions, place the study of palimpsest manuscripts within the larger context of the cultural history of the middle ages. The 33 contributions in this volume thus offer a cross-section, including the most recent technologies, of the current state of research in palimpsest studies.