ANCIENT ARCHIMEDES MANUSCRIPT
Thursday October 29 2:35 PM EDT
Ancient Manuscript Of Archimedes Sells For $2 Million
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An ancient text by the Greek mathematical genius Archimedes sold for $2 million Thursday at Christie's, which won a last-minute court challenge over ownership to proceed with the auction. The rare 10th-century Byzantine Greek palimpsest manuscript is believed to be the oldest and most authentic copy of Archimedes' major works to survive, and contains transcriptions of his writing on geometry and physics.
The bidding started at $480,000 on the work, which had a pre-sale estimate of between $800,000 and $1.2 million, and rose rapidly to the price of $2 million and a final sale price of $2,202,500 after Christie's added its commission.
The sale went ahead after a court battle Wednesday night in which the Greek Orthodox Church, claiming ownership of the manuscript, failed to stop the auction. A federal judge ruled that Christie's had the right to sell the work on behalf of a French family that has had it for 75 years.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem sued Christie's and alleged that the 174 pages of text were stolen. The auction house argued that the current owners were descendants of a Frenchman who legally bought the volume in the 1920s.
Archimedes lived from 287-212 B.C.. Christie's said the manuscript was the only source for his treatise ``On The Method of Mathematical Theorems'' and the only known copy of the original Greek text of his work, ``On Floating Bodies.'' The manuscript also contains the text of his works ``On The Measurement of the Circle,'' ``On the Sphere and the Cylinder,'' ''On Spiral Lines,'' and ``On the Equilibrium of Planes.''
Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Thursday October 29 5:25 AM EDT
Judge Allows Auction Of Old Copy Of Archimedes Work
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Greek Orthodox Church, which claims ownership of a 10th century copy of a manuscript by mathematical genius Archimedes, lost a last-minute court battle Wednesday to stop an auction of the work at Christie's.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood refused to block the auction scheduled for 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) Thursday in Manhattan. After holding an emergency hearing in the early evening, the judge ruled that Christie's had the right to auction the work on behalf of a French family that has had it for some 75 years.
Wood agreed with arguments by Christie's that French law should apply in the case. Under those laws, anyone who holds a work for more than 30 years becomes its rightful owner.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem sued Christie's earlier Wednesday in an effort to stop the auction. The religious entity alleged that the 174 pages of text were stolen. But Christie's argued that the current owners of the work were descendants of a Frenchman who legally bought the volume in the 1920s.
Simos Dimas, a lawyer representing the religious entity, told Reuters his client would not take any other action to block the salebut would pursue the lawsuit in order to recover the work from the successful bidder.
The text is believed to be the oldest and most authentic copy of Archimedes' major works to survive, and contains transcriptions of the Greek mathematician's writing on geometry and physics. Christie's expects the sale to bring about $1 million. Archimedes lived from 287-212 B.C.
The volume being sold is a palimpsest, which is a manuscript in which pages have been written on twice. When writing materials were scarce, an original text could be washed off so the parchment could be reused. The upper layer of writing on the document to be auctioned contains instructions for religious rites. But underneath are versions of Archimedes' most celebrated Greek texts, ``Method of Mechanical Theorems'' and ``On Floating Bodies.'' In the Middle Ages, the work was owned by a monastery in Palestine whose collection was incorporated into the Greek Patriarchate library in Jerusalem in the 19th century. It was later transferred to a monastery in Constantinople, now Istanbul. The work was taken to Athens when the monastery's library was broken up after World War I.
Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Many want text in public domain
October 28, 1998
Web posted at: 12:17 a.m. EST (0517 GMT)
Christie's is convinced its consignor has a legal right to sell it, Lytsman said. Dr. Hope Mayo, Christie's consultant for manuscripts, said the work has been owned by the same French family for 70 years, but she would not reveal the seller's identity. Archimedes lived in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily and was killed in 212 B.C. by the Romans during the Second Punic Wars.
He is credited with many engineering developments, including catapults, pulley hoists, machines for pumping water and grappling irons used to tip ships over.
Legend has it that he leaped naked from a bathtub and ran through the streets shouting "Eureka!" ("I have found it!") after solving a problem. Scholars generally agree with many Greeks that the text should be in the public domain.
"It definitely ought to be in some public institution and not locked up in someone's family archive," said Marshall Clagett, an Archimedes expert and professor emeritus of history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. "It's just too important a work for that."
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Christie's refuses to halt sale of allegedly stolen manuscript
Wednesday, October 28, 1998
By JUDIE GLAVE
The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- The oldest known copy of works by mathematician and inventor Archimedes, dating back 1,000 years, will be sold at auction this week despite claims from Greek officials that it was stolen. "The sale will proceed as scheduled" Thursday in Manhattan, Christie's spokeswoman, Vredy Lytsman, said Tuesday. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has threatened to sue if the "Archimedes Palimpsest" is not returned to the Athens National Library, Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos has said. The work is expected to sell for between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
Scholars generally agree with many Greeks that it should be kept in the public domain. "It definitely ought to be in some public institution and not locked up in someone's family archive," said Marshall Clagett, an Archimedes expert and professor emeritus of history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. "It's just too important a work for that."
The work contains the original notes and calculations for two of Archimedes' most famous theories -- "On Floating Bodies" and "Method of Mechanical Theorems" -- and gives insights into how he arrived at them.
A palimpsest is a work written on parchment, where one manuscript has been erased and another written over it. The 174-page text only recently surfaced. It had not been seen since the 1920s, when Greek officials say it was stolen from a library in Constantinople, now Istanbul.
But Christie's is convinced its consignor has a legal right to sell it, Lytsman said. Dr. Hope Mayo, Christie's consultant for manuscripts, would not reveal the seller's identity but said the work has been owned by the same French family for 70 years. Archimedes lived in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily and was killed in 212 B.C. by the Romans during the Second Punic Wars.
He is credited with many engineering discoveries including catapults, pulley hoists, machines for pumping water, and grappling irons used to tip ships over. Many of his inventions were used in battles, including one in which he reportedly used bronze mirrors to reflect sunlight and set Roman ships on fire.
Archimedes' mathematical contributions were equally significant. He is perhaps best known for the legend that he leaped naked from a bathtub and ran through the streets shouting "Eureka!" ("I have found it!") after solving a problem. The manuscript up for auction was copied in the 10th century, Mayo said, and most likely erased in the 12th or early 13th century when the parchment was reused to make a Greek prayerbook.
It was rediscovered in the Convent of the Holy Grave in Constantinople in 1907. Danish scholar Johan Ludvig Heiberg first copied the Archimedes text -- which appears as faint lines of light brown ink underneath darker brown ink -- using only a magnifying glass and natural light.
Christie's experts were able to enhance several pages using ultraviolet light and digital scanning. "There are real possibilities for making additional recoveries, for making discoveries that Heiberg was unable to make because he couldn't see them," Mayo said. She said that includes complex geometric diagrams that Heiberg couldn't read but reconstructed from his own understanding of Archimedes' theories. As a historian, Mayo said, viewing the manuscript was "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." "To have this book in my own hands, study it, and realize its importance," she said, "nothing compares to the excitement of that."
Copyright © 1998 Bergen Record Corp.
Archimedes Work to Be Auctioned
By Judie Glave
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 27, 1998; 6:03 p.m. EST
NEW YORK (AP) -- A 1,000-year-old parchment volume that is the oldest known copy of Archimedes' work will go on the auction block this week despite claims from Greek officials that it was stolen. The 174-page work, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the notes and calculations for two of the mathematician's most famous theories -- ``On Floating Bodies'' and ``Method of Mechanical Theorems.'' A palimpsest is a work written on parchment, on which one manuscript has been erased and another written over it. The volume, which is expected to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million, only recently surfaced. It had not been seen since the 1920s, when Greek officials say it was stolen from a library in Constantinople, now Istanbul.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has threatened to sue if the Archimedes Palimpsest is not returned to the Athens National Library, Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said. But Christie's spokeswoman Vredy Lytsman said the sale Thursday will proceed as scheduled. Christie's is convinced its consignor has a legal right to sell it, Lytsman said. Dr. Hope Mayo, Christie's consultant for manuscripts, said the work has been owned by the same French family for 70 years, but she would not reveal the seller's identity.
Archimedes lived in the ancient Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily and was killed in 212 B.C. by the Romans during the Second Punic Wars. He is credited with many engineering developments, including catapults, pulley hoists, machines for pumping water and grappling irons used to tip ships over. Legend has it that he leaped naked from a bathtub and ran through the streets shouting ``Eureka!'' (``I have found it!'') after solving a problem. Scholars generally agree with many Greeks that the text should be kept in the public domain.
``It definitely ought to be in some public institution and not locked up in someone's family archive,'' said Marshall Clagett, an Archimedes expert and professor emeritus of history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. ``It's just too important a work for that.''
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
October 26, 1998.
Ancient Archimedes Text Turns Up, and It's for Sale.
By MALCOLM W. BROWNE.
A millennium-old volume, defaced by mildew and scorched around the edges, will go on the auction block on Thursday, and scholars hope that expert examination of the relic will reveal nuances in the thinking of Archimedes -- the greatest mathematical genius of the ancient world.
The volume, a 10th-century copy of writings by Archimedes (who died in 212 B.C. at the hands of a Roman soldier), is the oldest and presumably most authentic copy of Archimedes' major works to survive. Christie's of New York City, the auctioneer selling the little book, expects it to bring about $1 million.
However, the sale of the work may face a challenge. The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem has claimed that the manuscript was stolen in the 1920's and belongs to him, news agencies reported. The Greek Minister of Culture, Evangelos Venizelos, told Agence France-Presse that he supported the patriarch's claim.
Christie's spokesman, Vredy Lytsman, said Monday that the auction house was "still satisfied that the consigner has a legal right to sell the document," and that the auction would take place as scheduled.
The volume has been inaccessible to scholars since the early years of the 20th century. Technologies developed since then may extract new knowledge about Archimedes from the text and diagrams. The 174 pages of text, bound in modern times into a book 7 1/2 by 6 inches, spent some 1,000 years in the hands of various owners and following a trail as twisted as that of the fictional Maltese Falcon in the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett.
Archimedes, a Greek who spent most of his life in the city of Syracuse in Sicily, is remembered especially for the mathematics he devised that prefigured the invention of calculus, and for his discovery of the physics of flotation. A superb inventor and engineer, his machines for pumping water, raising enormous weights and destroying enemy ships earned him a reputation among his Roman foes as a kind of magician. The volume being auctioned, technically called a "codex" to distinguish it from a scroll, is a palimpsest (pronounced PAL-imp-sest). That is, its original inked copy of Archimedes' texts was washed off, probably in the 13th century, so that the expensive vellum on which it was written could be reused by the Byzantine church or monastery that owned it.
The upper text, clearly legible, consists of commonplace instructions for conducting religious rites, like marriages and exorcisms. The priceless underlying 10th-century text, almost obliterated by washing, is the only surviving version of Archimedes' "Method of Mechanical Theorems" and "On Floating Bodies" -- the great scientist's two most celebrated works. The Archimedes originals disappeared in the distant past, possibly destroyed in the fires and looting that demolished the great library of Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century.
New techniques for reading the faint traces of the older text have accentuated its enormous importance. Experts commissioned by Christie's have revealed new detail, especially in geometric diagrams, by exposing pages to ultraviolet radiation. This causes the vellum, which is preserved animal skin, to glow, improving the legibility of the writing. The experts also digitized images of the writing and applied a computer program to suppress the 13th-century text and religious illustrations while enhancing the underlying writing and geometrical diagrams. The later religious text was written at right angles to the Archimedes text -- a fact that facilitated the separation of the two texts.
Mathematicians and historians of science have been visiting Christie's recently to look at the treasure. "Just seeing and touching the Archimedes Palimpsest was a thrilling emotional experience for me," said Dr. Sherman Stein, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis. Like many other mathematicians, Stein is fascinated by Archimedes' legendary triumphs in mathematics, physics, engineering and weaponry. "I recently finished writing a book about Archimedes," Stein said, "but because this palimpsest has turned up, I'll have to revise one chapter. It won't change the substance, but some subtleties of Archimedes' methods have come to light."
After languishing in obscure libraries for nine centuries, the Archimedes Palimpsest was rediscovered in 1907 in the Convent of the Holy Grave in Constantinople (renamed Istanbul in 1930). The New York Times reported the discovery on page 1 of its July 16, 1907, issue. The discoverer, Dr. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a professor of philology at the University of Copenhagen, was not permitted by Turkish authorities to remove the manuscript, but he was allowed to copy it the best he could, and he later translated the legible parts. Heiberg got another look at the manuscript two years later -- the last scholarly inspection of the treasure. In 1918, the Ottoman Empire was dissolved by Turkey's defeat in World War I, and book collections in Constantinople were broken up.
A Christie's manuscript expert, Dr. Felix de Maraz Oyens, said in an interview that some time after 1920, the palimpsest passed into the hands of a French family that has owned it ever since. Christie's declines to identify the family, which has put the document up for auction.
From the time of Heiberg's investigations in the early 20th century until the document was entrusted to Christie's, it had never been examined by anything more sophisticated than a magnifying glass. Dr. Hope Mayo, a consultant to Christie's on ancient books, said that the auction house enhanced only a few pages of the palimpsest to show what could be done. A more thorough inspection will be the responsibility of its future owner, she said, although the book may be bought by someone unwilling to grant access to scholars.
"That would be a terrible loss," said Dr. Chris Rorres, a mathematics professor at Drexel University and an amateur Archimedes scholar.
"The rigorous mathematical proofs devised by Archimedes have come down to us from various sources, but only his 'Method of Mechanical Theorems,' recorded in this palimpsest alone, lets us see how he arrived at his proofs. It is a bit like a structure in which the scaffolding goes up first, then the building, and finally the scaffolding is taken away, leaving only the final result. Archimedes' 'Method' is the only remnant of his work that lets us see the scaffolding," Rorres said.
The Archimedes "method" starts by experimenting with physical objects and then looking for the abstract principles that underlie their interactions. In his introduction to the Method, Archimedes wrote: "It is easier to supply the proof when we have previously acquired, by the method, some knowledge of the questions than it is to find it without any previous knowledge."
According to Roman writers who chronicled the life of Archimedes, the mathematician was a devoted subject of Hiero II, ruler of Syracuse, and spent part of his career designing and building weapons to defend Syracuse -- catapults, pulley hoists and levers for disabling enemy ships and siege towers. The ancient historians Polybius, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder all mention such inventions, although none was alive in Archimedes' lifetime. Some Greco-Roman historians also assert that during the Roman siege of Syracuse from 214 to 212 B.C., at the height of the Second Punic War, Archimedes used bronze mirrors to focus sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire.
This anecdote, among many others about Archimedes, has been called into question by various scholars, although Dr. IoannisSakkas, a Greek engineer, demonstrated in 1973 that the feat is technically possible. With the help of 50 sailors holding 31 bronze-coated mirrors, he set fire to a wooden boat 160 feet offshore.
Many historians believe that Archimedes was not the inventor of the Archimedes Screw, a rotary pump commonly used in Egypt for irrigation. Rorres said, however, that there were no references to the device in Egyptian texts prior to the time of Archimedes, and that he therefore might have invented it.
But another famous anecdote -- that Archimedes leapt naked from his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka" ("I have found it") after solving a problem -- seems unlikely. According to the story by the Roman architect Vitruvius, Hiero asked Archimedes to examine a gold wreath intended to adorn the statue of a goddess, and to determine whether the goldsmith had adulterated the wreath with silver.
In the Vitruvius version, Archimedes notices that when he steps into a tub full to the brim with water, some water spills from the tub. Vitruvius wrote that Archimedes placed a weight of pure gold equal to the weight of the wreath in the tub and then filled the tub to the brim. Archimedes then supposedly took out the gold and replaced it with the wreath, reasoning that a wreath adulterated with silver would occupy more volume than an equal weight of pure gold, and would cause water to spill.
But Rorres challenged this version, saying that the amount of spillage would have been much too small to measure using the means at Archimedes' disposal. Instead, Archimedes would probably have invoked his own Law of Buoyancy and Law of the Lever, first balancing the gold weight against the wreath in air and then balancing the two objects in water. An imbalance in water would clearly reveal adulteration, he said.
Be that as it may, Archimedes scorned the practical devices he designed as intellectually inferior to his mathematical theorems, and none of his writing refers to devices or engineering. In his will Archimedes asked that a cylinder circumscribing a sphere be placed on his tomb, illustrating what he apparently considered the most important geometrical relationship he had proved: that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds that of a circumscribed cylinder of the same dimensions.
At the age of about 75, Archimedes was supposed to have been sketching a geometric proof at the moment Roman troops under Marcellus overran Syracuse in 212 B.C. and killed the Greek sage. Marcellus apologized to Archimedes' relatives, and the sphere-and-cylinder symbol was placed on his grave, where the Roman politician Cicero sought and found it 137 years later.
Byzantium, the successor of the Roman Empire, was the custodian of the Archimedes Palimpsest for centuries, but Archimedes' admirers give the Romans little credit.
Dr. George F. Simmons of Colorado College, Colorado Springs, commented in "Calculus Gems" that "the Romans were so uninterested in mathematics that Cicero's act in cleaning up Archimedes' grave was perhaps the most memorable contribution of any Roman to the history of mathematics."
Mathematicians hope the Archimedes Palimpsest will command more respect by its new owners.
Clerics Want Archimedes Text Back
By Elena Becatoros
Associated Press Writer
Friday, October 23, 1998; 9:26 p.m. EDT
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greek Orthodox clerics are demanding the return of the only known copy of a text by the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes -- a manuscript to be auctioned next week, Greece's culture ministry said Friday. If the French family selling the 1,000-year-old manuscript doesn't return it, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem will consider legal action, Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said. ``According to the Jerusalem Patriarchate, the manuscript has been stolen,'' Venizelos said. Christie's in New York is scheduled to auction off the 174-leaf text on Thursday. It includes transcriptions of writings on geometry and physics by the 3rd century B.C. theoretician and inventor. Christie's anticipated it could fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
A Christie's spokeswoman said the auction date has not been affected by the Patriarchate's claim.
``As far as I know, the sale will take place as scheduled because Christie's continues to be satisfied that the consignor has a legitimate title and right to sell,'' Vredy Lytsman told The Associated Press. But the auction house has said it would call off the sale if proof emerges that the French family is not the legitimate owner.
Venizelos originally appealed to several Greek groups and businesses to pool funds to bid on the text. Then, questions were raised about ownership of the manuscript, lost when the Patriarchate's library was transferred to Athens from Constantinople -- now Istanbul -- after World War I. It had been housed earlier in Orthodox monasteries in Palestine.
If the Jerusalem Patriarchate can prove its ownership, the manuscript -- known as the Archimedes Palimpsest -- will be housed in Athens' National Library, Venizelos said. A palimpsest is a manuscript in which pages have been written on twice. When writing materials were in short supply, the original text would be washed away when no longer deemed useful.
A U.S. lawyer for the Jerusalem Patriarchate, Simos Dimas, drafted a letter to Christie's to demand the manuscript's return, Venizelos said. Christie's has not released the name of the family that placed the text up for auction. According to a statement by Felix de Marez Oyens, the head of the auction house's Books and Manuscripts Department, Christie's is satisfied it ``has been legitimately owned by a French family for the last three-quarters of a century.'' If the auction goes ahead, the Greek government will bid for it, Venizelos said.
``If the outcome is negative for legal issues -- because historically and morally, there is no doubt that the Patriarchate is right -- of course we will return to our efforts of purchasing this manuscript,'' he said.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
Greeks Seek Origins of Ancient Text
By Elena Becatoros
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, October 22, 1998; 4:58 p.m. EDT
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Christie's was preparing to take bids on one of its rarest offerings: a one-of-a-kind copy of a 2,300-year-old text by the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes. Not so fast, the Greek government said. The Greek Culture Ministry is investigating how the medieval manuscript, scheduled for auction next week, came into the hands of its current owners following a mysterious journey from Middle Eastern monasteries to a family in France.
``The origin of the manuscript is being examined,'' Milena Apostolaki, an adviser to the culture minister, said Thursday. The 174-leaf text, which includes writings on geometry and physics, is expected to sell for $800,000 to $1.2 million at the auction, set for Oct. 29 in New York. But if the ministry's investigation proves it was not legally obtained, the auction could be called off.
``If there is absolute proof, we will not put it up for sale,'' said Vredy Lytsman, spokeswoman for Christie's in New York. Any challenge to ownership would have to be further investigated by the auction house, which has already carried out its own research into the origin of the manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest. A palimpsest is a manuscript whose pages have been written on twice. When writing materials were in short supply, the original text would be washed away when no longer deemed useful and a new one written over it.
Christie's is ``satisfied the Archimedes Palimpsest has been legitimately owned by a French family for the last three-quarters of a century,'' said Felix de Marez Oyens, the head of Christie's Books and Manuscripts Department. But its earlier history is steeped in mystery. Archimedes' text was copied in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, in the 10th century. Two centuries later, it was covered by a Greek religious text, but the original writings were still legible.
In the Middle Ages, it was owned by a monastery in Palestine whose manuscript collection was incorporated into the Greek Patriarchate library in Jerusalem in the 19th century, de Marez Oyens said. No one knows why it was transferred to another monastery in Constantinople after that. All but four ancient texts -- including the Archimedes volume -- were taken to Athens when the monastery's library was dissolved after World War I. The other three are now in libraries in France and the United States. The Archimedes text was the only one to become privately held.
The manuscript ``is the most significant and substantial Greek palimpsest known, and one of the most important palimpsest manuscripts of a classical text ever to come to light,'' a Christie's statement said. For some Greek officials, the manuscript represents a cherished part of a cultural heritage that has been scattered across the globe -- including the Elgin marbles taken from the Parthenon in the 19th century and now on display at the British Museum in London.
For Greece, acquiring the manuscript ``has symbolic, political and scientific value, and I believe we must attempt it,'' said Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who has appealed to large Greek banking groups and charitable foundations to help finance a winning auction bid.
Archimedes, who explored physics, astronomy and engineering, is credited with discovering the principle of water displacement while sitting in his bath. His inventions include a planetarium that demonstrated the movement of the stars, the compound pulley and devices for raising water. The manuscript contains ``the only known copy of the original Greek text of his work 'On Floating Bodies,''' Christie's said. It also contains works such as ``On the Measurement of the Circle,'' ``On the Sphere and the Cylinder'' and ``On Spiral Lines.'' The fact that the text has not been accessible to study for nearly a century adds to its significance. Modern methods, such as high-resolution digital scanning and ultraviolet light, could reveal previously unnoticed details and text, Christie's said.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
Related Sites :
Archimedes of Syracuse Homepage