Historians Say They’ve Discovered a Long-Lost Page From the Archimedes Palimpsest, a Treasure Trove of Rare Ancient Mathematical Treatises

Cool Finds

Three leaves had been missing for more than a century. Researchers found one of them when they decided on a whim to check the archives of a French museum

Christian Thorsberg

Correspondent

March 17, 2026 7:00 a.m.

A leaf from a medieval manuscript containing ancient Greek mathematical treatises has been rediscovered in the archives of a French museum. Previously, historians assumed the rare page had been lost to history.

Known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, the manuscript is a 177-page document created in the tenth century C.E. It contains rare copies of treatises by Archimedes, the third-century B.C.E. mathematician, along with writings by other authors.

“This book never ceases to give up its secrets,” William Noel, a curator of ancient manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, told Smithsonian magazine’s Mary K. Miller in 2007. “It’s like working with a great mind; you’re made to think of things in new ways—from the nuts and bolts of medieval history to the roots of calculus and physics.”

Archimedes made pivotal discoveries across mathematics, engineering and physics. In the sixth century C.E., Isidore of Miletus, the architect of the Hagia Sophia, compiled the first known collection of his treatises. Today, two of his treatises—The Method and Stomachion—survive only through the Archimedes Palimpsest, created by an unknown scribe in Constantinople.



An illustration of the prophet Daniel covers the original text of Archimedes' treatise. © Blois, Musée des Beaux-Arts / IRHT-CNRS

The manuscript later ended up in a monastery, where 13th-century monks decided to “wash, scrub and overwrite” the pages, writes Artnet’s Richard Whiddington. They repurposed the parchment with Archimedes’ treatises as a prayer book.

“This practice of recycling was common at the time for such animal-skin writing materials, which were extremely costly,” according to a statement from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

In 1906, a historian photographed every page of the manuscript. But in the years since then, three leaves went missing. Meanwhile, the manuscript sold for $2 million in a 1998 Christie’s auction, and it was later put on display at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Researchers now say they have recovered one of these missing leaves.

Fun fact: Archimedes’ eureka moment

Legend has it that the mathematician leapt from a bath shouting “Eureka!,” coining the term, after discovering a principle related to water displacement—though this story is likely a myth.

The discovery started with a friendly conversation among colleagues. Victor Gysembergh, a historian at CNRS, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP) that he and his co-workers had been discussing the fact that French kings used to keep precious parts of their libraries in the city of Blois.

Gysembergh suggested to his fellow researchers, “Hey, let’s see if there’s a palimpsest in Blois,” he tells AFP. “It was very unexpected to stumble upon a Greek manuscript. And even more so to find a tenth-century scientific treatise!”

The document they found at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois—leaf 123 of the manuscript—matched the 1906 photographs.

“On one of its two sides, a text of prayers partially covers geometric diagrams and a passage from the treatise On the Sphere and the Cylinder, Book I, Propositions 39 to 41, much of which remains largely legible,” according to the CNRS statement. “The other side is covered by an illumination added in the 20th century, depicting the prophet Daniel surrounded by two lions, beneath which the ancient text remains to this day inaccessible using conventional methods of examination.”



A page from the manuscript that includes Archimedes' treatise On Floating Bodies Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The researchers published their findings in the German Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. They hope to use X-rays and multispectral imaging to decipher the text that had been covered up. This technique had been used to reveal passages from the manuscript in the early 2000s.

“I documented everything and saved all of the tiny pieces from the book, including paint chips, parchment fragments and thread, and put them into sleeves so we knew what pages they came from,” Abigail Quandt, the senior conservator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum, recalled in a 2011 statement about the analysis. “I stabilized the flaking ink on the parchment using a gelatin solution, made innumerable repairs with Japanese paper and reattached separated folios.”

Officials aren’t sure whether the rediscovered leaf will join the rest of the manuscript in Baltimore.