Scientists deciphered the manuscript of the ancient mathematician
(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists managed to decipher the ancient scroll. It was written by the ancient Egyptian mathematician Claudius Ptolemy.
More than 200 years after its discovery, the manuscript kept mysteries, and now its contents are no longer a secret.
It is known that the ancient manuscript was found back in 1819. This entry was overlaid with a Latin text. It was the text of Isidore of Seville. It was under him that there were 15 palimpsests.
Among the manuscripts, such valuable works were discovered as: a text on mathematical mechanics, a Ptolemy treatise and an astronomical text.
The treatise occupied 6 pages of text and it was this that scientists tried to restore. Why was the text written on top of the treatise?
Everything is very simple, in those days parchment was very expensive and monks often wrote their manuscripts on top of existing works.
At that time, scientists could not understand what was written there.
They tried to apply a special chemical composition to the scrolls, which was supposed to help highlight the necessary texts, but the reagent only destroyed the records, thereby complicating further work.
Alexander Jones and his team of scientists have been working on the translation since 2020. To achieve this goal, they used multispectral images to recover lost text fragments.
After extensive research, scientists were able to decipher and translate the manuscript. It turned out that in it Ptolemy described his device – the meteoscope.
He created it to measure the heights and distances of celestial bodies in space. Details about its construction are still unknown, but scientists do not lose optimism.
The manuscript consists of two parts. In the first, the mathematician describes what is needed to assemble the tool.
The second contains several subsections, where the Instruction on how to use the meteoscope for observations is laid out.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.
