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In Review

Smithsonian SciencePalimpsests, Pictures & Prayers
photograph of 15-century palimpsestMORE TO THE STORY? An Armenian prayer book owned by the Smithsonian Institution traveled to Rochester this winter to be scanned in the laboratory of Gregory Heyworth, an associate professor of English and textual science. Believed to date from the 15th century, the book is a palimpsest—a manuscript in which its parchment surface was scraped clean and overwritten. Using one of the few university-based systems designed to study such objects, Heyworth and his team scanned the book under multiple wavelengths of light, with a goal of deciphering the text that was originally on the parchment. Photograph by J. Adam Fenster