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Scientists who worked on the Archimedes Palimpsest are using modern imaging technologies to digitally restore a 700-year-old palm-leaf manuscript containing the essence of Hindu philosophy. The project led by P.R. Mukund and Roger Easton, professors at Rochester Institute of Technology, will digitally preserve the original Hindu writings known as the Sarvamoola granthas attributed to scholar Shri Madvacharya (1238-1317). The collection of 36 works contains commentaries written in Sanskrit on sacred Hindu scriptures and conveys the scholar's Dvaita philosophy of the meaning of life and the role of God... "It is literally crumbling to dust," says Mukund, the Gleason Professor of...

SAN FRANCISCO - It wasn't exactly the ancient siege of Syracuse, but rather a curious quest for scientific validation. According to sparse historical writings, the Greek mathematician Archimedes torched a fleet of invading Roman ships by reflecting the sun's powerful rays with a mirrored device made of glass or bronze. More than 2,000 years later, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona set out to recreate Archimedes' fabled death ray Saturday in an experiment sponsored by the Discovery Channel program "MythBusters." Their attempts to set fire to an 80-year-old fishing boat using their own versions...

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus. ~~~snip~~~ An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized. ~~~~snip~~~~

After 12 centuries under rubble and 24 years of restoration, Rome has opened the doors to Santa Maria Antiqua, the oldest church in the Roman Forum's ancient ruins and its rare collection of early medieval art. An earthquake buried the church and its numerous Byzantine and early Christian frescoes in 847 and it remained untouched until excavation and reconstruction began in 1900. Much of the structure had survived and restorers have been hard at work on the interior since 1980 with the site to reopen to the public on April 10 until the end of May. "The Santa Maria...

THE book cost $2 million at auction, but large sections are unreadable. Some of its 348 pages are torn or missing and others are covered with sprawling purple patches of mildew. Sooty edges and water stains indicate a close escape from a fire.

SAN FRANCISCO – Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers. Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works. The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. “We are...

X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News A series of hidden texts written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being revealed by US scientists. Until now, the pages have remained obscured by paintings and texts laid down on top of the original writings. Using a non-destructive technique known as X-ray fluorescence, the researchers are able to peer through these later additions to read the underlying text.

For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing into the spine. The owners wondered if the strange book might have some value, so they took it to Christie's Auction House of London. And in 1998, Christie's auctioned it off—for two million dollars. For this was not just a prayer book....

An ambitious international project to decipher 1,000-year-old moldy pages is yielding new clues about ancient Greece as seen through the eyes of Hyperides... What is slowly coming to light, scholars say, represents the most significant discovery of Hyperides text since 1891, illuminating some fascinating, time-shrouded insights into Athenian law and social history... [T]here is more to the palimpsest than Archimedes' work, including 10 pages of Hyperides, offering tantalizing and fresh insights into the critical battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., in which the Greeks defeated the Persians, and the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., which spelled the beginning of...

Not what it appears to be: the Archaic Mark LONDON. A clever bit of detective work by US scholars and scientists has proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago’s manuscript collection is, in fact, a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery. Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark codex has been rife for more than 60 years, prior to this definitive research many believed it was an early record (possibly as early as the 14th century) of the Gospel of Mark and the closest of any extant manuscript to the world’s oldest...

A long-obscured transcription of Archimedes' mathematical theories has been brought to light through x-rays, US scientists say. The 1000-year-old parchment, made of goatskin, contains Archimedes' original work, which was written in the 3rd century BC but copied down by a 10th century scribe. The manuscript includes the only copy in the original Greek of the treatise "Method of Mechanical Theorems", in which the Greek mathematician, physicist, and inventor describes how he developed his mathematical theorems using mechanical means. It is also the only source in the original Greek of Archimedes' theory of flotation of bodies. In the 12th century parchment...

For five days in May, the ancient collided with the ultra-modern at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), bringing brilliant, long-hidden ideas to light with brilliant X-ray light. A synchrotron X-ray beam at the Department of Energy facility illuminated an obscured work - erased, written over and even painted over - of ancient mathematical genius Archimedes, born 287 B.C. in Sicily. Archimedes' amazingly advanced ideas have been lost and found several times throughout the ages. Now scientists are employing modern technology — including X-ray fluorescence at SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) — to completely read the Archimedes Palimpsest, the...

Text reveals more ancient secrets By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News The commentary on Aristotle lay hidden within the parchment Experts are "lost for words" to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment. Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest. But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text - a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle. Project director William Noel called it a "sensational find". The prayer book was written in the 13th...

The Portraiture of Caligula in Right Profile- AR Denarii: The Imagery and Iconography By Joe Geranio For photos at portraitsofcaligula.con under basesclaudius tab For some time now I have been fascinated with the portraiture of Caligula in the round! He has typically been portrayed in the round (typology)1 , and his physiognomy. as follows, but first Most of these portraits are based upon official portraits, we can assume as Caligula (Princeps) wished to be portrayed some twelve to 30 sculptural likenesses of Caligula have survived,2 but these identifications can be quite subjective due to familial assimilation. Caligula’s characteristics typical are:...

Dutch archaeologists have recently completed the rescue excavation of a unique treasure hoard dating to the beginning of the 5th century AD, from a field in Limburg... According to the Byzantine historian Zosimus, Constantine III tried to re-secure the entire Roman Rhine frontier against Germanic invaders... The historians Orosius and Zosimus tells us that Constantine III solved the problem of the invading Germanic groups by liberal use of the money bag along with developing close alliances to Germanic warlords on both sides of the Rhine... The Echt hoard would therefore have belonged to a Germanic officer in Roman service –...

In 1970, a rock-cut tomb was discovered by workers building a private house in Jerusalem's Givat Hamivtar neighborhood. Inside the two-chambered burial, dating back to the first century BCE, archeologists found a decorated ossuary – a limestone box containing the bones of the deceased – and an enigmatic Aramaic inscription affixed to the wall. "I am Abba, son of Eleazar the priest," proclaimed the 2,000-year-old text. "I am Abba, the oppressed, the persecuted, born in Jerusalem and exiled to Babylon, who brought back Mattathiah son of Judah and buried him in the cave that I purchased." Who was Abba, this...

A fascinating series of articles came to my attention today by Tatjana Jovanovic, a top contributor of a Linkedin group called Medieval and Renaissance Art, Antiques, Architecture, Archaeology, History and Music. Her article is entitled “Medieval Banksy: Confession of Medieval Graffiti Artist, Monk, and Writer.”Ms. Jovanovic is an aesthetician and artistic designer. She basis her article on two pieces that appeared in the US edition of The Guardian/The Observer. The first by Matt Champion provides a gallery of 13th and 14th century graffiti that is being collected by a British association known as the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/mar/29/medieval-graffiti-pictures-lydgateA second...

The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years. High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots. The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and...

New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world's foremost molecular genetic laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. The findings also suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Jonah. The DNA findings, alongside statistical conclusions made about the artifacts--originally excavated in 1980--open a potentially signficant chapter in Biblical archaeological history. A documentary presenting the evidence, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," will premiere on the Discovery Channel on March 4 at 9 pm...

The cave in which Jesus Christ was buried has been found in Jerusalem, claim the makers of a new documentary film. If it proves true, the discovery, which will be revealed at a press conference in New York Monday, could shake up the Christian world as one of the most significant archeological finds in history. The coffins which, according to the filmmakers held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary and Mary Magdalene will be displayed for the first time on Monday in New York. Jointly produced by Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and Oscar winning director...