Digital Transcription of the Archimedes Palimpsest
Derek J. Walvoord, Roger L. Easton · 2008
when Christie’s auctioned the codex for US$2 million dollars to an anonymous American collector, who has lent it to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, and generously funded its conservation, imaging, and study. The condition of the book has deteriorated markedly since Heiberg’s work, as shown by the comparison of a Heiberg photograph to the current appearance of the same page in Figure 1. The manuscript has great historical importance, but unfortunately much of the text is very difficult to discern due to its poor condition. Our underlying objective in the transcription of the Archimedes palimpsest was to apply modern imaging techniques to preserve the manuscript and to assist transcription by scholars. In this process, we used multispectral image collection and processing, which facilitated transcription of nearly 80% of the manuscript, and a digital imaging tool that used this partial transcription to assist scholars in reading damaged characters and words.