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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 (gcide)

palimpsest \pal"imp*sest\ (p[a^]l"[i^]mp*s[e^]st), n. [L.
palimpsestus, Gr. pali`mpshstos scratched or scraped again,
pali`mpshston a palimpsest; pa`lin again psh^n to rub, rub
away: cf. F. palimpseste.]
A parchment which has been written upon twice, the first
writing having been erased to make place for the second. The
erasures of ancient writings were usually carried on in
monasteries, to allow the production of ecclesiastical texts,
such as copies of church services and lives of the saints.
The difficulty of recovering the original text varied with
the process used to prepare the parchment for a fresh
writing; the original texts on parchments which had been
washed with lime-water and dried were easily recovered by a
chemical process, but those erased by scraping the parchment
and bleaching are difficult to interpret. Most of the
manuscripts underlying the palimpsests that have been revived
are fragmentary, but some are of great historical value. One
Syriac version of the Four Gospels was discovered in 1895 in
St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai by Mrs. Agnes Smith
Lewis. See also the notes below. --Longfellow.
[1913 Webster]

Note: Palimpsest is the name given to ancient parchments
which have been used more than once for writing
purposes. The conquest of Egypt by the Saracens in the
7th century cut off from Europe the papyrus which was
used to write on, and parchment could be had only in
limited quantities. So through the dark ages, old
manuscripts were used, after removing the first writing
upon them. Sometimes the writing was washed off with a
sponge, and the parchment smoothed with pumice stone;
at other times the letters were scraped away with a
sharp blade. Nearly all ancient manuscripts, however,
were written with an ink which could not be entirely
removed, and traces of a former writing could be seen
beneath the new copy. In modern times there have been
various efforts to restore these ancient writings by
some chemical treatment. In this way have been found
copies of the Republic of Cicero, the Institutes of
Gaius, a part of the Epistle to the Romans, and other
parts of the Old and New Testaments. The Republic of
Cicero was covered by a commentary on the Psalms,
written by St. Augustine. --Student's Cyclopedia, 1897.
[PJC]

Note: In an auction on November 6, 1998, a 12th-century
palimpsest of one of Archimedes' works was sold for 2
million dollars. The 174-page book, the oldest known
copy of Archimedes' work, had been owned by a French
family since the 1920s, and was sold by Christie's
auction house in New York to an unidentified private
American collector. The palimpsest volume includes
notes and calculations for two of the Greek
mathematician's most famous theories, On Floating
Bodies and Method of Mechanical Theorems. A Christie's
spokesperson said the buyer, who was not identified,
indicated that the work would be made available to
scholars. Also bidding was the Greek government, which
claimed the work was stolen from a library in the
former Constantinople, now Istanbul, and belonged to
Greece. According to the Athens News Agency, the
Patriarchate of Jerusalem took Christie's to court
claiming that the manuscript was part of its library,
which had been transferred to Istanbul and later to
Athens for safekeeping. The court, however, ruled that
Christie's had the right to auction the manuscript for
a French family, which claimed to own it for the last
75 years since one of the family's ancestors bought it
from Orthodox monks in Istanbul. According to the
court's ruling, French law applied in the case, under
which a person who holds any object for more than 30
years becomes its rightful owner.
[PJC]

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