Monday, April 18, 2011

The Sinai Palimpsests Project

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: The Sinai Palimpsests Project:
Scholars use tech tools to reveal texts
Researchers from UCLA and abroad to begin analyzing erased manuscripts that retain invisible traces of the past

By CRYSTAL HSING (The Daily Bruin)
Published April 15, 2011, 1:41 am in News

Instead of reading between the lines, UCLA researchers will be reading under them.

Leading a team of scholars and researchers, a UCLA professor has collaborated with the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library to begin a five-year project to study the erased layers of text in a collection of ancient manuscripts.

Claudia Rapp, a UCLA history professor, and Michael Phelps, executive director of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, will lead the Sinai Palimpsests Project. Together they will study a collection of more than 125 palimpsests, or recycled manuscripts, at St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai in Egypt using imaging technology.

[...]
Via John Byron's The Biblical World blog.

More on St. Catherine's Monastery here and follow the links. For an important and famous palimpsest from St. Catherines (Codex Syriacus of the Four Gospels) see here and follow the links. And for other manuscript imaging and conservation projects see here and follow the many links.