What is it about?
Some early parchment manuscripts were reused by scrubbing off the initial text and writing over it as "palimpsests". In the Vatican palimpsests were unwittingly further damaged by early chemical treatments to attempt to read the scrubbed off earlier text and preserve the parchment. Multispectral imaging of Vat. gr. 73 in multiple light wavelengths with advanced camera systems and processing of the digital images provided scholars with a new ability to read the previously illegible text.
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Why is it important?
The results of this work highlight the potential of interdisciplinary studies of manuscripts using advanced imaging for future studies of manuscripts. Advances in computer power, neural networks and artificial intelligence offer potential new processing tools to further advance visibility of difficult to read text from cameras of different resolutions, especially machine learning in collaboration with scholars familiar with the text.
Perspectives
This publication was only possible with tremendous collaboration across all levels of the Vatican Library, industry and associates, as well as the guidance of the editors. This included the BAV Prefect, the dedicated Imaging and Conservation teams, a knowledgeable team of researchers, and external technical experts with their digital camera and image processing systems.. This cross-disciplinary teamwork was critical to developing effective solutions for reading this and other troublesome texts.
Michael Toth
University College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Multispectral Imaging of Vat. gr. 73, The Vatican Library Review, December 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/27728641-00102001.
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