January 29, 2009
After ten years of conservation, imaging, and research, the project to retrieve the undertexts from the Archimedes Palimpsest is coming to a close. Beneath an overlayer of a 13th-c. monastic prayer book have been discovered the unique texts of Archimedes' Method and Stomachion, two uniquely surviving speeches of the Attic orator Hyperides, and, just possibly, Alexander of Aphrodisias's lost commentary on Aristotle's Categories. In this talk, William Noel, Director of the Project, discussed the history of the manuscript and the project to retrieve its secrets.