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content: 2026-08-01 capture run — 19 finds across 10 productive sources

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2026-08-01 01:52:22 -04:00
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src/content/find/2026/08/archimedes-palimpsest/index.mdx
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---
name: "The Archimedes Palimpsest"
subtitle: "A prayer book written across the only surviving copy of two Archimedes works"
date: 2026-08-01
shortlist: true
link: "https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/how-a-13th-century-monk-created-a-manuscript-that-erased-archimedes.html"
linkText: "openculture.com"
source: "Open Culture"
topics: [history-and-archives, learning-and-reference]
tags: [manuscript, mathematics, archive, imaging]
description: "In 1229 a monk scraped a Greek codex for parchment and wrote a prayer book across it at right angles. The codex was Archimedes, and the mathematics survived underneath."
---
In Jerusalem in 1229 a monk named Johannes Myronas needed parchment, so he scraped an old Greek codex clean, cut the leaves down and wrote a prayer book across them at right angles. The codex was Archimedes. Scraping, it turns out, is not erasing: the mathematics stayed on the page as a ghost beneath the liturgy, and imaging has since recovered from it two treatises that exist in no other copy anywhere.