Ancient, Buried Texts Discovered and Analyzed in Sinai

St. Catherine’s Monastery was founded in the heart of Sinai during the 4th century. Some of the manuscripts in its library are 1,700 years old. 

During the Middle Ages, as parchment was expensive, it was a common practice to reuse manuscripts by erasing the texts written on them and writing new texts. They were scraped with pumice, hence their name “palimpsest” that means “scraped again” in ancient Greek.

Using cutting-edge technology, Emel’s teams were able to reveal texts that are unable to be read by the naked eye and covered by other texts: “the erased layers contain languages and texts that are of inestimable value in reconstructing the history of the Middle East at the end of the Ancient period and during the Middle Ages,” explained one of the researchers.

Among these exceptional discoveries, Emel has revealed that there are three texts believed to have been written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine. The results of these discoveries will be made available to the general public in 2018.