# The Archimedes Palimpsest
> Ioannes Myronas, scribe, over an unnamed tenth-century copyist - Archimedes undertext second half of the tenth century; euchologion completed by April 1229
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/ioannes-myronas/archimedes-palimpsest/
> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-01
## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Ioannes Myronas, scribe, over an unnamed tenth-century copyist
- **Date:** Archimedes undertext second half of the tenth century; euchologion completed by April 1229
- **Medium:** Iron gall ink on parchment, palimpsest, with later paintings in body colour and gold
- **Dimensions:** 174 folios. No measured dimensions are given by the holding project or the museum, and none is asserted here
- **Object type:** Manuscript
- **Period:** Byzantine, tenth and thirteenth centuries
- **Current location:** Private collection, on deposit at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, since January 1999. Folio 123 at the Musee des beaux-arts de Blois; one leaf at Cambridge University Library
- **Attribution:** documented
## Summary
A Byzantine prayer book of 174 parchment folios, finished by April 1229 and probably made in Jerusalem, written on parchment recycled from at least five older books. One of them was a tenth-century copy of Archimedes. Three of the treatises underneath exist in no other copy anywhere: On Floating Bodies in Greek, The Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the Stomachion. Ten further folios carry the orator Hyperides, previously known only from papyrus scraps.It was catalogued in Constantinople in 1899 as an unremarkable service book, recognised by Johan Ludvig Heiberg in 1906, photographed by him, and then lost for most of a century. In the meantime a leaf had already been removed by Constantine Tischendorf and sold to Cambridge, four forged Evangelist portraits had been painted over the text to raise the price, and three folios had been cut out. It was sold at Christie's New York at 2pm on 29 October 1998 for a hammer price of USD 2,000,000, USD 2.2 million with the premium, over an injunction sought by the Greek government and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The underbidder was the Greek consul general, at USD 1.9 million.The anonymous buyer put it on deposit at the Walters Art Museum, paid for a decade of conservation and imaging including X-ray fluorescence work at a synchrotron, and on the tenth anniversary of the sale released the entire data set under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. In March 2026 one of the three missing folios was identified in a museum store at Blois, where it had sat unrecognised since 1973.
## Provenance
Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it.
- **second half of the tenth century-before 1229** Unrecorded, probably a Constantinopolitan library `[documented]` (The Archimedes codex written, almost certainly at Constantinople, the only place with a continuous tradition of copying ancient mathematics)
Dated on palaeography. The project associates the copying of Archimedes texts in this period with the circle of Leo the Geometer.
- **by April 1229-sixteenth century** Unrecorded monastic use `[documented]` (The Archimedes codex and at least four other books erased and remade as a euchologion, completed by April 1229, probably at Jerusalem)
The prayer book destroyed the readable text and preserved the parchment. Without the recycling nothing would survive.
- **sixteenth century-c. 1840** The monastery of Mar Saba, Judaean desert `[documented]` (In the monastery library)
When the palimpsest reached Mar Saba is not known; that it was there in the sixteenth century is clear.
- **c. 1840-after 1908** Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre, Constantinople `[documented]` (In the Metochion library; catalogued by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus in 1899 as MS 355; examined and photographed by Johan Ludvig Heiberg in 1906 and last studied by him in 1908)
Heiberg's photographs are in the Royal Danish Library and remain the only record of three folios that have since gone missing.
- **early 1840s-1876** Constantine Tischendorf, then his estate `[documented]` (One leaf removed from the manuscript; sold to Cambridge University Library from his estate in 1876)
Now Cambridge University Library MS Add. 1879.23. Not recognised as part of this manuscript until Nigel Wilson identified it in 1968.
- **after 1908-1920s** Not established `[unknown]` (The manuscript leaves the Metochion by unrecorded means)
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem alleged theft from a convent library in the 1920s. The project states that how it left is not known.
- **by about 1942-1940s** Salomon Guerson (argued) `[disputed]` (Ownership asserted by Victor Gysembergh, who states that the illumination on folio 123 was executed about 1942 at Guerson's instigation, to raise the value of the leaves for sale so that he could escape antisemitic persecution)
This account is not the one the selling family gave and is not in the project's own history. It is recorded here because it is made by the scholar who identified the Blois leaf, in a signed publication.
- **mid twentieth century-29 October 1998** Marie Louis Sirieix, then his daughter Anne Guersan, France `[disputed]` (Held in a French private collection and consigned to Christie's New York in 1998)
The family claimed ownership since the 1920s. The court records establish presence in the French collection at least since the 1960s. The 1999 opinion records little evidence surrounding the acquisition.
- **29 October 1998-present** Anonymous private collector, American `[documented]` (Bought at Christie's New York for USD 2,000,000 hammer; deposited at the Walters Art Museum in January 1999 for conservation, imaging and study, funded by the owner)
The owner has never been publicly identified. He released the entire imaging data set under a Creative Commons Attribution licence on the tenth anniversary of the purchase.
- **1973-present** Musee des beaux-arts de Blois `[documented]` (Folio 123 bequeathed to the museum by the collector Andre Frank; catalogued and digitised unidentified; recognised as part of this manuscript by Victor Gysembergh in October 2025 and announced in March 2026)
Inventory 73.7.52. How Frank acquired it is not known.
## Auction results
Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so.
- **** ,
- This manuscript has been at auction once. The reported figures are routinely conflated: USD 2,000,000 is the hammer given by the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, and USD 2.2 million is the sum reported in the press. The relationship between them, a ten per cent buyer's premium, matches the Christie's New York scale of the period but is not stated in those terms by any source consulted here, and is therefore DERIVED.
- **1998-10-29** Christie's, New York,
- Hammer: 2,000,000
- With premium: 2,200,000
- Sold at 2pm to an anonymous American collector. The underbidder was Greece's consul general in New York, who bid to USD 1.9 million before dropping out. The pre-sale estimate could not be verified from a fetchable source and is deliberately left blank rather than repeated from secondary summaries. The project's history page dates the sale to 28 October and its digital page to 29 October; 29 October is supported by the contemporary press.
## Open questions
- How did the manuscript leave the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre after 1908? The holding project states plainly that it is not known, and the 1999 litigation did not establish it.
- Did Salomon Guerson own the manuscript, and when? Victor Gysembergh states that the illumination on folio 123 was made about 1942 at Guerson's instigation. That account is not reflected in the project's own history and has not been reconciled with the Sirieix and Guersan chain.
- Where are the other two folios photographed by Heiberg and now missing? One of the three has been found in a provincial French museum store; the other two are unlocated.
- What was the Christie's pre-sale estimate in 1998? The figure circulating in secondary summaries could not be confirmed against any source reachable from this desk, and is deliberately not repeated here.
- Who owns the manuscript? The buyer of 1998 has never been publicly identified, and the archive at OPenn catalogues the collection as Private Collection A.
- Why does the Archimedes Palimpsest Project's own website give two different dates for the sale, 28 and 29 October 1998, on two of its pages?
- What will multispectral and X-ray fluorescence imaging of the Blois leaf recover, and can the improved techniques now read passages the Baltimore campaign could not?
## Sources
- [1] The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, 'About the Archimedes Palimpsest', giving the folio count, the seven treatises and the texts unique to this manuscript.
- [2] The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, 'The History of the Archimedes Manuscript'.
- [3] The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, 'The Conservation of the Archimedes Palimpsest', on the disbinding, the modern adhesive and the Canadian Conservation Institute analysis.
- [4] The Archimedes Palimpsest Project, 'The Digital Palimpsest', on the release of the data set on 29 October 2008.
- [5] Mike Toth and Doug Emery, 'Archimedes Palimpsest Digital Release README Document', 29 October 2008, stating the licence terms.
- [6] Spencer P. M. Harrington, 'Archimedes Manuscript Sold', Archaeology 52:1, January/February 1999.
- [7] Rita M. Graefe, 'The Conflicting Obligations of Museums Possessing Nazi-Looted Art', Boston College Law Review 51 (2010), 473, citing at note 110 Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem v. Christie's, Inc., No. 98 Civ. 7664 (KMW), 1999 WL 673347, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 30, 1999). Text extracted from the PDF at this address.
- [8] Victor Gysembergh, 'Palimpseste d'Archimede: comment une page perdue a refait surface a Blois', The Conversation, 8 April 2026. First-person account by the scholar who identified the leaf.
- [9] Wikimedia Commons file metadata for the Archimedes Palimpsest imaging data released by the project, licensed CC BY 2.0 and CC BY 3.0, with the imaging credited to the Rochester Institute of Technology, Equipoise Imaging, Boeing LTS and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
- [10] Wikipedia, 'Archimedes Palimpsest'. Tertiary, consulted only for orientation; nothing in this record rests on it. Flagged for replacement with Netz, Noel, Tchernetska and Wilson (eds.), The Archimedes Palimpsest, 2 vols, Cambridge University Press for the Walters Art Museum, 2011.
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