Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. The word palimpsest comes from two Greek roots (palin + psEn) meaning "scraped again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be reused, and a use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice.
Because parchment and vellum, both prepared from animal hides, are more durable than paper or papyrus, most palimpsests known to modern scholars are parchment— which rose in popularity in western Europe after the 6th century A.D. Also, where papyrus was in common use, reuse of writing media was less common because papyrus was cheaper and more expendable than costly parchment, but some papyrus palimpsests do survive, and Romans referred to the custom of washing papyrus. The reed from which it was made did not grow in Italy.
The word palimpsest also occasionally means a plaque which has been turned around and is now engraved on what was originally the back side. Ancient craters whose relief has disappeared leaving only a "ghost" of a crater are also known as palimpsests.
With the passing of time the faint remains of the former writing that had been washed from parchment or vellum, using milk and oat bran, would reappear enough so that scholars can make out the text and decipher it. In the later Middle Ages the surface of the vellum was usually scraped away with powdered pumice and the writing was lost with it.
Scholars of the 19th century used chemical means to read palimpsests that were sometimes very destructive, using tincture of gall or later, ammonium hydrosulfate. Modern methods using ultraviolet and photography are more subtle.
The primary cause of the purposeful destruction of vellum manuscripts was the dearth of material. In the case of Greek manuscripts, so great was the consumption of old codices for the sake of the material, that a synodal decree of the year 691 forbade the destruction of manuscripts of the Scriptures or the church fathers, imperfect or injured volumes excepted. Pagan manuscripts have often only survived as palimpsests.
The decline of the vellum trade also on the introduction of paper caused a scarcity which was only to be made good by recourse to material already once used. Vast destruction of the broad quartos of the early centuries of our era took place in the period which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. The most valuable Latin palimpsests are accordingly found in the volumes which were remade from the 7th to the 9th centuries, a period during which the large volumes referred to must have been still fairly numerous. Late Latin palimpsests rarely yield anything of value. It has been noticed that no entire work has been found in any instance in the original text of a palimpsest, but that portions of many works have been taken to make up a single volume. These facts prove that scribes were indiscriminate in supplying themselves with material from any old volumes that happened to be at hand. -
A few of the most famous palimpsests:
- The Codex Ephraemi, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: portions of the Old and New Testaments in Greek, attributed to the 5th century, is covered with works of Ephraem Syrus in a hand of the 12th century
- Among the Syriac manuscripts obtained from the Nitrian desert in Egypt, British Museum, London: important Greek texts
- A volume containing a work of Severus of Antioch of the beginning of the 9th century is written on palimpsest leaves taken from 6th century manuscripts of the Iliad and the Gospel of St Luke, both of the 6th century, and the Elements of Euclid of the 7th or 8th century, British Museum
- A double palimpsest, in which a text of St John Chrysostom, in Syriac, of the 9th or 10th century, covers a Latin grammatical treatise in a cursive hand of the 6th century, which in its turn has displaced the Latin annals of the historian Granius Licinianus, of the 5th century, British Museum.
- The Ambrosian Plautus, in rustic capitals, of the 4th or 5th century, re-written with portions of the Bible in the 9th century, Ambrosian Library
- Cicero, De republica in uncials, of the 4th century, covered by St Augustine on the Psalms, of the 7th century, Vatican Library
- Codex Theodosianus of Turin, of the 5th or 6th century
- the Fasti Consulares of Verona, of A.D. 486
- the Arian fragment of the Vatican, of the 5th century
- the letters of Cornelius Fronto
- the Archimedes Palimpsest, a work of the great Syracusan mathematician copied onto parchment in the 10th century and overwritten by a liturgical text in the 12th century
- Sinaitic Palimpsest
Gore Vidal titled his memoirs Palimpsest
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
