Palimpsest

2 definitions found

From 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]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  palimpsest
       n : a manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on
           which more than one text has been written with the
           earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible