Auction...prayer book....'method'

[62S-R-S]

For Archeology buffs :

In 2003 a Nova program aired of a palimpsest - that Christies sold in '98 to someone for 2 million. Centuries earlier it existed in a monastery in Constantinople. This was a text that had been a copy of Archimedes' mathematical work. Archimedes lived in 280 bc. Roughly 900 AD the book was made. For whatever reason it was kept in Mar Saba, where a monk washed the papyrus clean in order to convert it to a medieval prayer book. Not much fuss about it until....

Johan Heiberg took interest and travelled to Instanbul at the Holy Supulchre, to photograph, in 1906. Prior to that it was used as a prayer book at the monastery of Mar Saba - although books were burned or destroyed in 1200. In the 1930's it went missing, but later discovered in Paris. In 1998 at auction the palimpsest was unveiled in decrepid condition. However, with top shelf labs, ultravilolet light and all manner of optical equipment, they were able to read the text..


sciencenews.org/article/prayer-archimedes

http://pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/ins...alimpsest.html

[62S-R-S]

Nice place to visit ?


palim...jpg


palim..2.jpg

[Eminence Gris]

Fantastic stuff.

[62S-R-S]

sculpt...jpg


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[62S-R-S]

Nova program that followed the auction.. Very well done :

[John Fusco]

Archimededs - ha - one of those science twits.

If he was so smart how come he couldn't realize that his "method" was nothing more than his opinion.
What a narcissist.
That Roman soldier sure told him like it is.
And how foolish, all those who waste so much time and energy trying to understand what he was thinking - and money - go figure , a rich man paying all that for a ratty old book...
And here I was thinking the millennials were a bunch of dopes.