A pioneer of Palimpsest studies, Archdeacon F.A. Knittel was finely attuned to the delicacy of his pursuit, even in the eighteenth century. His writings, as epitomised by the above quote, reveal the caution and fastidiousness with which he admonished upcoming generations of scholars. Treat such documents, he warned, so as to avoid permanent irreparable changes that might hinder future study. Sound advice indeed, yet his analogy with Oedipus proved also to be uncannily prescient in ways that he would have never anticipated when it came to the most famous palimpsest of the twenty-first century: the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest.Footnote ¹ Indeed, Oedipus is a timeless metonym for the imperfect nature of the human race and its helplessness against the unrelenting wheels of fate, two forces to which this palimpsest too has been subjected. The unforgiving passage of time and the imperfect conditions of carriage – political, religious and scholarly turmoil, fickle ownership and neglect, squabbles and law suits, abrasive scraping, overwriting and painting, fire, mould, rot and decay – have permanently damaged this document. But they have also entailed a fair amount of notoriety. Indeed, the palimpsest has undergone an Oedipean-like trajectory so unbelievable that it is remarkable that it even survives, let alone is able to be read. However, with the full advantages of hindsight, of leading edge technology and of scholarly expertise, it has been, and the results are beautifully documented and presented in this sumptuous two volume set.

At the turn of the twentieth century, it was discovered that a Byzantine prayer book (the Euchologion) was in fact written over no less than eight earlier manuscripts, two of which were hitherto unknown works by Archimedes, including the only Greek text of On Floating Bodies and the only attested versions of texts called the Method and the Stomachion. The palimpsest was brought to the attention of J.L. Heiberg, noted classical philologist, who used it in his scholarly edition and analysis. The manuscript then disappeared in mysterious circumstances but a century later it was purchased by an anonymous American collector who was set on making it available for scholarly scrutiny and public viewing. Forthwith, in 1999, an ambitious, multifaceted, privately funded project was commenced. Its objective was to ‘process’ the text – to conserve, image and study it, and at the same time to advance pioneering technologies to uncover its precious contents. Finally, after over a decade of painstaking restoration, sophisticated digital imaging and expert scholarly exploration, the resulting efforts have now been assembled for scholars and the wider public to consult and enjoy. The publication does exemplary justice to this critical and important work which has sent ripples across the discipline of the history of science and beyond.

Palimpsest studies are enjoying something of a revival in modern scholarship. It has been estimated that around a thousand have survived (p. 243). One extensive study dedicated to palimpsests was the recent EU-funded Rinascimento virtuale (2001–2004), and the technologies generated as a result of the Archimedes Palimpsest are already being applied to other texts. However, when the Archimedes Palimpsest was first scrutinised by Heiberg in 1906, it was read without any specialist technology. Heiberg examined the palimpsest directly and later from photographic reproductions. He dubbed the text ‘Codex C’ and the results of his scholarly scrutiny are contained in his four-volume Opera Omnia of Archimedes (1910–15), where it appears as part of his apparatus criticus. Archimedes' works have been translated into French by Peyrard (1807), Ver Eecke (1921) and Mugler (1970) and in English various works are available in translation: there exists Heath's edition (1897), Dijksterhuis's thorough commentary (1938/1956) and most recently Netz (2004).

This publication takes full advantage of the multi-platforms that are increasingly available to scholars. Companion sources to this publication most notably include two comprehensive websites. One of them, http://archimedespalimpsest.net/, hosts the core data related to this project and contains vital links, such as the Google book of the palimpsest. The second website, http://digitalpalimpsest.org/, allows one to search the palimpsest for a specific work or view a specific folio, viewing either the ‘overtext’ or ‘undertext’. Such website companions really underscore how powerful the two media can be when blended. Authors come to life in video clips, and one can source up-to-the-minute direct links to exhibitions, latest discoveries and community exchanges. A whimsical account of this work, The Archimedes Codex by Netz and Noel (2007), has also rallied public interest in the project. This contains amusing anecdotes, personal testimony and an easily accessible coverage of the details of the investigation and its results.

Overall, the project is to be thoroughly applauded for setting such good standards of scholarly practice when it comes to the organisation and accessibility of the data and metadata. The team involved in this project have been firmly committed to making their results freely accessible and have made full use of appropriate mechanisms, such as creative commons licences. This can only reinforce the commitment of a growing number of scholarly groups to follow similar practices.

The first volume is divided into five parts: The Manuscripts, History, Conservation, The Digital Palimpsest and The Texts. This is followed by an appendix with a concordance of foliations, a bibliography and a detailed index. Volume 2 contains ‘Codex C’ with a digital image of the palimpsest on one page in pseudo-colour created from ultraviolet fluorescence and red reflectance images (so that one can see the overtext in black, and the undertext in red simultaneously) and on the facing page a Greek transcription of the undertext. Where this technology has not been useful, principal components of ultraviolet images have been given instead. Occasionally photographic reproductions of Heiberg's critical edition have been included for comparison and variations from his readings are included in an apparatus under the siglum H. An appendix to this volume lists the names of the digital files over five pages.

Over the course of volume 1, the reader becomes more aware of the diversity of individuals who have devoted expertise to the project. Indeed, the scope of this study is impressive. Scientists, conservators, curators, classicists, historians, mathematicians, some of whom hail from curious and unexpected places, have all been instrumental in this project. After an engaging introduction, Part 1 is dedicated to a thorough description of the ‘manuscripts’. Each of the eight texts (including the two unknown texts) is taken in turn and aspects, such as contents, dimensions, collation details, palimpsesting process, parchment, ink, ruling, script, diacritics and punctuation, ornamentation, rubrication, diagrams, evidence of binding, date and origin, and references, are detailed. Following this, nine scholarly articles describe in authoritative detail aspects of the project.

Quandt gives a fascinating description of the processes for palimpsesting. Her account ranges from an analysis of the organic material of parchment (who knew the fibrosity of the skin of domesticated quadrupeds could be so critical?), to speculation based on the religious context as to why the manuscript might have been palimpsested. Her account reveals how much critical background can be garnered from a detailed study of the material artefact. Indeed, an indication of just how thorough this investigation was is the explanation and analysis of the minute tensioning holes found throughout the leaves as revealing the details of the palimpsesting process (pp. 86–8).

Lowden gives an account of the trajectory of the palimpsest as a document through time. He characterises its history as divided into five principal stages (p. 97): (1) the emergence of the text in Constantinople in the mid-tenth century as Archimedes texts; (2) its palimpsesting into the Euchologion c. 1229; (3) Heiberg's recovery in 1906–15; (4) its mysterious sojourn in Paris 1920–1999; (5) the modern period of conservation (1999 to present). He tackles the complex and intriguing question of the forged miniatures which occurred during (4). Through his careful reconstruction of buyers, sellers, museums, libraries and collectors, one is struck by the notion of the ‘value’ of a text, and how that inexorably changes through the passing of time.

Petersen rounds off the ‘Manuscripts’ section with a lively and very human account of Heiberg and his interactions with the manuscript in Constantinople and Copenhagen, embellishing his account with photographic documentation and excerpts from original letters. In keeping with the theme of the tenuousness of the survival of historic documents is his account of the eventual fate of the glass plates of the photographs of the palimpsest due to dire economic circumstances: as glass sheets for German greenhouses.

Quandt then contributes an entire part dedicated to the conservation challenges. One is immediately struck by the efforts to ensure the complete transparency of the conservation process. As part of this undertaking there were several thousand photographic images taken, 500 pages of handwriting, tracings of each side of the leaves and a videographic documentation of the whole process. Quandt highlights the intricacy and scale of her efforts: disbinding, dissolving of ancient adhesives, the repair of flaking leaves, the use of electron microscope images to detect fungal spores and non-invasive treatments to restore ink traces, as well as the preservation of the manuscript from future damage.

Christens-Barry, Easton and Knox, and in the next chapter Bergmann, reveal the intricacies of the image processing techniques. Fascinating visuals accompany their technical account allowing the reader to grasp the procedures, technicalities and results of this process. One appreciates the full force of modern technology used to detect even the smallest of traces as well as the mathematical algorithms on the generated data to assist classicists in reading as much of the text as possible. An indication of the sorts of critical collaboration that made this study so powerful is their admission that the images that the technicians could generate were not always as impressive to the scholars, and that the best possible results had to be generated ‘iteratively’ between these two groups (p. 179).

Emery, Lee and Toth tackle the issue of sustainable digital archives. They lay out in full detail their approach to managing the data and metadata sets and their account is supplemented with screen shots of www.archimedespalimpsest.net, ‘side-car files’ and XML samples, to elucidate how it was all achieved. ‘We never imagined that we had made a final statement’ they comment (p. 237), a sentiment that echoes an underlying desire throughout this project – that it will be ongoing, involve specialists from diverse fields, and that it will offer strategies for similar projects in the future.

Tchernetska and Wilson consider the palimpsest as a cultural artefact. They note that the big shift of the twentieth century was digital image enhancement which was performed entirely on a digital copy of the palimpsest, so that scholars did not have to touch the original at all. They also detail significant changes in storage, distribution and access for modern scholars which have revolutionised the industry. Scholars are in a better position than ever before to study these artefacts. They speculate on the raison d'être of the Archimedes Palimpsest which still remains an open question, and perhaps will never be answered definitively. Why would anyone ‘recycle’ Archimedes? Economic constraints? Intellectual or social interests diverted? Pragmatic considerations? An accident?

Finally, Netz considers the place of the Codex C in Archimedes scholarship. The palimpsest is significant not just because it is a palimpsest, but also because it is the oldest source we have on Archimedes. While it is clear that Archimedean scholars will have plenty of new material to explore, he highlights several new and exciting finds from the study. These include the importance of variant readings between the codices and what they imply (pp. 274–5), new readings which support the convention that Euclid did indeed antedate Archimedes (pp. 276–7), Doric spelling of the word for ‘diagram’ and the implications of that for the history of the text, and a richer understanding of Archimedes' conception of infinity (p. 304). Because of his interest in diagrams, Netz explores the features of the 71 diagrams contained in this codex (p. 282) and there is plenty of new material for him: 30 of these are from the unique texts. Netz also highlights an interesting case of proofs by contradiction and the related diagrams (p. 284). In addition, he notes various mathematical techniques of interest, such as the practice of extending cases from one situation to the next (i.e. from the sphere to the spheroid pp. 300–1), ‘suggestive’ ordering rather than deductive ordering in the Method and new readings of the Method.

Netz's enthusiasm for Archimedes is infectious. His oft-repeated claim that Archimedes is ‘the most important scientist of antiquity’ (see, e.g., p. 267) or ‘who ever lived’ ([2007], p. 27) does a valuable job of attracting attention to the project and promoting its significance. However, the historiographical implications of this point of view have their limitations. There is no doubt that Archimedes' achievements are stunning, but after a while Netz's insistence tends to comes off as sensationalising rather than scholarly. While Archimedes' achievements are indeed unique and awe-inspiring, we gain a better understanding of them by considering how he resembled his colleagues and counterparts in the Greek world and elsewhere as well as how he surpassed them. Furthermore, increasingly studies in the history of science are reaping the intellectual benefits of expanding the purview of the discipline beyond the traditional trajectory of the ‘western miracle’. A balanced consideration of diverse Eurasian cultures of inquiry and the individuals who furthered scientific thinking under distinctly different epistemic priorities has offered profound insight into the circumstances we find ourselves in today and the history of intellection more generally.

The eventual fate of the palimpsest is unknown, but given the mindfulness with which this document has been treated over the last decade, one has no doubt that it will be treated with the utmost care and consideration. Indeed, the palimpsest beautifully epitomises the manifold relations a ‘text’ may have with prior ‘texts’; this study reflects what can be achieved when you give equal and simultaneous scrutiny to a work as an intellectual repository, a material artefact and a cultural by-product. For that reason, this publication will appeal to a wide variety of curious and committed specialists. We look forward to future finds by this team as well as by upcoming generations of scholars.