Completely Indecipherable

The analysis showed that the monk subjected a total of five old books to the same treatment. In addition to the Archimedes treatise, the palimpsest contains ten pages of text by Hyperides, an orator who lived in Athens around 350 B.C., as well as fragments of an old commentary by Aristotle.

It is, of course, not entirely accurate to claim, as the Beck publishing house does, that "the history of mathematics must be completely rewritten" based on the information gleaned from the analysis -- especially since the work was discovered in the academic world long ago. One hundred and fifty years ago, Konstantin von Tischendorf, a scholar in the German city of Leipzig, found the unsightly little book in the monastery library at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and recognized its "mathematic" content.

In 1906, the great Danish literary historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg arrived in the East. Contemporaries describe him as a man with a "tall figure and flowing beard." After some searching, the Danish scholar found the document, which by then was being kept in an abbey in Istanbul.

The condition of the manuscript was still good enough that it was, as Heiberg wrote, "reasonably legible with a magnifying glass." Almost in a state of euphoria, the Dane translated the pale texts. He was only somewhat careless when copying the mathematical drawings. Four pages that had been covered with brightly colored pictures were completely indecipherable to Heiberg.

Stolen Goods

The modern experts from Baltimore mention Heiberg's pioneering work merely as an aside, preferring to hype themselves as heroes who "uncover the last secrets of this genius of antiquity with state-of-the-art decoding methods." And they leave the dark chapter that followed Heiberg's work completely unmentioned. According to Noel and his associates, at some point the codex "fell into the hands of a French family in Paris." They do not elaborate on the identity of the family or what in fact transpired.

This is all the more notable because of the intense legal battle that has raged around the strange journey the work has taken. The moldy book has been described as stolen goods in two US court cases. According to court documents, the costly and still undamaged manuscript was at the monastery in Istanbul in the early 1920s. The Greek Orthodox patriarch in charge of the abbey, Timothy of Vostra, has testified under oath that the book should never have been sold without permission.

In 1923, the manuscript suddenly turned up in the suitcase of Marie Louis Sirieix, a businessman and traveler to the Orient who lived in Paris. Sirieix claimed to have bought it from a monk, but he was unable to furnish a receipt or sales document. A short time later, the manuscript was cosmetically "improved" with four drawings in color by the Evangelists. The drawings are imitations done in the Byzantine style, and were apparently meant to increase the manuscript's value.

When Sirieix died in 1956, the dubious manuscript was still hidden in his house in Paris, possibly in the cellar. This was where it likely suffered water damage and was further damaged by pests, smoke and mold. In the 1970s, Sirieix's daughter attempted to convert the decaying bit of antiquity into cash. She had 200 books printed and quietly approached museums in Europe and the United States in an effort to unload the manuscript.