A newly identified Archimedes Palimpsest leaf could help recover lost ancient mathematics using modern imaging techniques.
A page from one of the world’s most important ancient manuscripts has resurfaced after being missing for decades. Researchers have identified a long-lost leaf from the Archimedes Palimpsest at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois, France, a discovery that could help unlock portions of Archimedes’ writings that have remained hidden for centuries.
Early analysis confirmed that the leaf is page 123 of the Palimpsest and contains part of Archimedes’ mathematical treatise On the Sphere and the Cylinder (Book I, Propositions 39–41). The discovery was described in a study published on March 6, 2026, in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
A manuscript reused and scattered
The Archimedes Palimpsest is a Greek manuscript from the tenth century that preserves several works by Archimedes of Syracuse. During the Middle Ages, part of the original writing was erased so the parchment could be used again for other texts. Reusing parchment in this way was common because animal skin writing materials were very expensive.
The manuscript was kept first in Jerusalem and later in Constantinople. In 1906, Johan Ludvig Heiberg arranged for it to be photographed before it entered a private collection in France. In 1996, the French Ministry of Culture authorized its export and auction sale to a private collector, who remains its current owner.
The Archimedes Palimpsest is now housed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, United States. For many years, scholars could study it only through the photographs taken by Johan Ludvig Heiberg in 1906. In the early 2000s, multispectral imaging revealed important Archimedes texts along with previously unknown fragments of ancient literary and philosophical writings. But before the manuscript reached its current owner, it passed through several hands. Three leaves recorded in Heiberg’s photographs vanished during that history and were long treated as lost.
One leaf matches the record
Victor Gysembergh, a CNRS researcher at the Centre Léon Robin for Research on Ancient Thought (CNRS/Sorbonne University), identified the Blois leaf as one of those missing pages. By comparing it with Heiberg’s photographs, which are now held at the Royal Danish Library, he was able to confirm clearly that it was leaf number 123.
One side contains a prayer text laid partly over geometric diagrams and a passage from On the Sphere and the Cylinder, Book I, Propositions 39 to 41. Much of that underlying material can still be read. The reverse side is covered by an illumination added in the twentieth century, showing the Prophet Daniel surrounded by two lions. The ancient writing beneath that image remains inaccessible through conventional examination methods.
Imaging may reveal more
If the required authorizations are granted, the researcher plans to begin the first imaging campaigns within a year. The work will combine multispectral imaging with a series of fluorescence analyses using synchrotron X-rays, with the goal of revealing the text hidden beneath the illumination.
The discovery has renewed interest in studying the full Archimedes Palimpsest again, with more powerful techniques than those used in the early 2000s. A new examination could make it possible to reread pages that remained illegible during the first imaging campaign.
Reference: “A leaf from the Archimedes palimpsest rediscovered in Blois” by Victor Gysembergh, 6 March 2026 Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
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