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Eureka! Archimedes Revealed
pin_gween writes "The Mercury News has an AP wire that shows science uncovering history. 800 years ago a monk scrubbed the text off a goatskin parchment to write prayers. Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest. Now scientists are using x-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, to cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. It takes 12 hours to scan one page, then the information is posted online."
One thing to keep in mind is that just because this palimpset is the only copy that we know about today, doesn't mean that there weren't other copies extant at the time it was reused; and at the time it was probably not such a unique text. Remember that Constantinople (now Istanbul) had just been sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and things were still quite chaotic. At that time (1229) the city would still have been controlled by the Crusaders (it was not retaken by the Byzantines until 1261). In addition the city was sacked again in 1453 when it was conquered by the Turks, after which the Church and Byzantine civilization in general underwent systematic persecution and suppression. All of these disruptions have caused the loss of huge numbers of texts.
The Archimedes manuscript is not the only manuscript reused to make the prayer book - there are several other texts that were also used, including some others which are now also our only remaining copies. These include both pagan writers and other Christian texts. Again, we have little reason to think that any of these would have been considered particularly unique at the time.
Events have not been kind to ancient manuscripts generally; what we have left today is only a relatively small sampling of what was originally a vast ancient literature. The Church has often been blamed, and in the case of pagan religious texts there may be some justice in the charge; but what have doubtless been much bigger culprits for the bulk of the destruction have been marauding armies, fires, floods, and simply the ravages of time as old manuscripts decay without having been copied.