The book was really, really old, the original Greek manuscript was done in the 10th century. And then no one was able to read it, the math part, I mean, or understood its significance. And the parchment was scraped down and re-used to make a book of religious ceremonies in the 15th century, and apparently well-used for quite a while. The palimpsest came to light in the 19th, a scholar, I think he must have been English, looked over the monastery library and said the only thing of interest was a palimpsest of mathematical symbols, and he took a page back to Oxford. But it wasn't until 1907 that a Danish mathematician using a magnifying glass was able to decipher it, and he understood its significance.
The museum had a good film about the exhibit, Archimedes, and the history of the palimpsest.
But one thing I had not know, and was horrified to hear, is that the library at Constantinople was destroyed when the town was sacked by the fourth crusade, around 1200. I had, of course, known about the library at Alexandria, but not this. Scholars estimate that about 1% of Greek writing survives to this day. The amazing thing is that the rediscovery of just these few Greek writings sparked the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
What might have happened if these things had not been lost! |
