Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Palimpsest Continues to Yield Its Secrets

I've written before about the ongoing effort to restore the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest, but the NYTimes printed a nice update yesterday that I thought I would pass along. Besides the Archimedes text, researchers have discovered ten pages of speech texts delivered by Hyperides, "an Athenian orator and politician from the fourth century B.C." It is being called the most important Hyperides breakthrough since 1891, and the discovery of two previously unknown speeches has increased the known number of Hyperides' works by twenty percent.

Make sure to read the whole Times piece, which contains much more about the palimpsest's history and the other interesting things the research team has discovered.

[Note: Title corrected; typing palimpsest is tricky!]