Creating a Palimpsest

  • By Lexi Krock
  • Posted 09.30.03
  • NOVA

Twenty-two centuries after the Greek genius Archimedes wrote his most revealing mathematical work, and eight centuries after a Christian monk erased what may have been the last surviving copy, the lost treatise has turned up and is being deciphered in a Baltimore museum (see "Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest" at left). But what exactly is a palimpsest? Find out in this brief but revealing interactive.

Launch Interactive

See how medieval scribes made a palimpsest, a manuscript written on parchment that has another text written over it.

This feature originally appeared on the site for the NOVA program Infinite Secrets.

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© WGBH Educational Foundation

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