The Archimedes Palimpsest
Nigel Wilson editor Reviel Netz editor William Noel editor Natalie Tchernetska editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:24th Nov '11
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Complete set of colour images and transcriptions of the most important manuscripts discovered in the Archimedes Palimpsest.
The Archimedes Palimpsest is the world's greatest palimpsest, containing two unique treatises by Archimedes, previously unknown speeches by Hyperides and a commentary on Aristotle's Categories. This volume contains a complete set of colour images and facing-page transcriptions of the most important manuscripts that constitute the Palimpsest.The Archimedes Palimpsest is the name given to a Byzantine prayer book that was written over a number of earlier manuscripts, including one that contained two unique works by Archimedes, unquestionably the greatest mathematician of antiquity. Sold at auction in 1998, it has since been the subject of a privately funded project to conserve, image, and transcribe its texts. Images and transcriptions of three of these manuscripts are provided here. The first contains seven treatises by Archimedes, including two unique texts, Method and Stomachion, as well as the only extant Greek version of Floating Bodies. Previously unknown speeches by Hyperides and a second- or third-century commentary on Aristotle's Categories follow. The product of ten years of conservation, imaging, and scholarship, this book will be of interest to manuscript scholars, classicists, and historians of science.
'The imminent massive publication of a complete facsimile and transcription will be a huge gift to the study of ancient mathematics.' Alexander Jones, Wall Street Journal
'There is enormous expectation in the scholarly community about the arrival of the first copies of a new book from Cambridge University Press, which contains full color images of the palimpsest, a technical account of how the images were made and complete transcriptions of the texts. It's too early to say whether this will revolutionize our understanding of Greek mathematics, but it will contain new texts thought to have been lost forever by the Greek orator Hyperides and the most complete versions of several works by Archimedes, including two books which exist only in this manuscript. This is the iceberg in full view, a massive tome that took more than a decade to produce, recovering - perhaps as fully as can ever be hoped - texts that miraculously escaped the oblivion of decay and destruction.' The Washington Post
ISBN: 9781107014374
Dimensions: 345mm x 251mm x 40mm
Weight: 2500g
352 pages