Excursus

Rebecca Morelle of the BBC reports that advanced imaging technology revealed that a medieval prayer book containing within it works by Archimedes and Hyperides also contains a third text, a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories by Alexander of Aphrodisias.

The prayer book was written by the thirteenth century scribe John Myronas. Dr. Noel describes the production of the palimpsest:

It’s a rather brutal process, but it means you can reuse parchment if you are short of it. You take books off shelves, you scrub off the text, you cut them up and you make a new book.

You can see the original parchment and the result of the text revealed by imaging technology here. More information about the Archimedes Palimpsest, including an image bank, can be found here.

Forget plain text or ODF. Parchment—now that’s an archival format.