The Sinai Palimpsests Project (2011 – ) at the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library

The Sinai Palimpsests Project (2011 – ) at the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library

A collaboration of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai, Egypt, and EMEL, made possible by a generous five-year grant from Arcadia.
St. Catherine’s Monastery, the world’s oldest continually operating monastery, holds 130 known palimpsests. The erased writings on these palimpsests date from the 4th-12th centuries and are mostly unidentified. If these erased writings can be recovered, the potential for major discoveries is outstanding.
The project seeks to:

• Use spectral imaging to recover erased ancient texts on palimpsests of St. Catherine’s Monastery.
• Identify and paleographically describe the erased texts, as possible.
• Publish legible images online, rendered accessible by a searchable catalog.

View image gallery here…
Online presentation of project results will be a publication of St. Catherine’s Monastery.
[website under construction – coming soon]