IRHT-CNRS
Lost page from Archimedes’ Palimpsest
The page was in the Museum of Fine Arts in Blois and contains prayers and an illumination of the biblical prophet Daniel with two lions.
One page believed to be missing of Archimedes’ famous Palimpsest was identified in a museum in central France.
The discovery was made in Blois Museum of Fine Arts by researcher Victor Gysembergh, from the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Initial analysis confirms that the page corresponds to sheet number 123 of the manuscript and contains part of the work “On the Sphere and the Cylinder”, written by the ancient mathematician Archimedes. The results are detailed in a study published in the academic journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
Archimedes’ Palimpsest is a 10th century Greek manuscript which preserves several treatises by Archimedes of Syracuse. In the Middle Ages, parchment was partially erased and reused for other texts — a common practice at the time, as parchment made from animal skin was expensive. As a result, the original scientific writings became hidden beneath later religious content.
Historically, the manuscript passed through Jerusalem and Constantinople before being photographed in 1906 by Danish philologist Johan Ludvig Heiberg, whose images later became essential for scholars researching the work. After entering a private collection in France, the manuscript was finally sold at auction in 1998 and is now in the Walters Art Museum in the United States, says the .
For decades, researchers have relied primarily on Heiberg’s photographs to study the palimpsest. In the early 2000s, advanced multispectral imaging techniques revealed Previously hidden passages of Archimedesalong with fragments of other ancient texts. However, three sheets documented in the first photographs had disappeared from private collections and were considered lost.
Gysembergh’s work has now identified one of these missing leaves in Blois. By comparing the manuscript page with Heiberg’s original photographs, now preserved in the Royal Danish Library, the researcher confirmed that the rediscovered sheet corresponds to page 123 of the palimpsest.
One side of the parchment contains prayers written over faint geometric diagrams and text from Archimedes’ treatise, specifically Book I, Propositions 39 to 41, which remain partially legible. The back features a 20th century illumination representing the biblical prophet Daniel with two lionsa decorative addition that currently prevents scholars from accessing the underlying ancient text.
Researchers hope to analyze the page in more detail using modern imaging methods. Planned studies include multispectral photography and X-ray fluorescence analysis at a synchrotron facility, which could reveal the writing hidden beneath the painted surface.
