The Syriac Galen Palimpsest (Proceedings of the British Academy: Themed volumes of essays in the humanities and social sciences, 283)

This volume explores the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, containing On Simple Drugs by Galen of Pergamum (129–216) from the vantage point of numerous discipline. Greek scholars analyses the source text and argue that the Syriac translation can help improve the Greek text and help us understand it. Syriacists and Arabists then explore the subsequent tradition and argue that later texts who excerpted the Syriac translation, can be used to reconstitute this translation, as they offer indirect evidence. Conservators and scientists detail the methodologies used to decipher the erased undertext, and finally there is a preface to the digital edition of the Syriac translation, as well as two further articles exploring machine learning and the traditional paradigm of describing Greek-Syriac-Arabic translation technique. The volume as a whole shows what can be achieved when colleagues from different disciplines come together to decipher an unreadable text and allow us to see the invisible. Read more