Technology reveals the stories erased from ancient manuscripts

"In 1229, the priest Johannes Myronas found no better medium for writing his prayers than a 300-year-old parchment filled with Greek texts and formulations that meant nothing to him. At the time, any writing material was a luxury. He erased the content which had been written by an anonymous scribe in present-day Istanbul trimmed the pages, folded them in half and added them to other parchments to write down his prayers."

"In the year 2000, a team of more than 80 experts from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore set out to decipher what was originally inscribed on this palimpsest an ancient manuscript with traces of writing that have been erased. And, after five years of effort, they revealed a copy of Archimedes' treatises, including The Method of Mechanical Theorems, which is fundamental to classical and modern mathematics."

"A Spanish study now published in the peer-reviewed journal Mathematics provides a formula for reading altered original manuscripts by using artificial intelligence. This will reduce the enormous labor involved in uncovering hidden and compromised texts. The applications of this technology, however, go beyond this text. Science hasn't been the only other field to experience the effects of this practice. The Vatican Library houses a text by a Christian theologian who erased biblical fragments which were more than 1,500-years-old just to express his thoughts."

In 1229 a priest recycled a 300-year-old Greek parchment by erasing its contents, trimming and folding the pages to write prayers. In 2000 a team of experts spent five years deciphering the palimpsest and revealed Archimedes' treatises, including The Method of Mechanical Theorems. A recent Spanish formula uses artificial intelligence to read altered original manuscripts and aims to reduce the enormous labor of uncovering hidden and compromised texts. Palimpsests span religious, medical and scientific traditions, from erased biblical fragments in the Vatican Library to Greek medical treatises beneath Byzantine liturgy. Primary texts exhibit mechanical, chemical and optical alterations that require multispectral imaging, computational analysis, X-ray fluorescence and tomography to recover original writing.

Read at english.elpais.com