Hidden Text Found In Medieval Book

Roman legislative text was hidden in the parchment of the back of a book

Hidden for centuries: In the back of a book of a medieval manuscript, scientists have found an antique text. The parchment shows a Roman legislative text, together with some comments on the sides. When the parchment was recycled by the medieval writers, they scraped and washed out the old writings. Only now, x-rays of a synchrotron could make them visible again.

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Special techniques can make the hidden text visible again.
© Northwestern University

Modern technology has often helped to make writings on old parchments and manuscripts readable again. Often the writings are pale or the parchment is too fragile to be opened. Even carbonized scrolls can be deciphered with special x-ray technology nowadays. In some cases, writers have covered older scrolls on purpose, to create some room for new writings.

Hidden text in the back of the book

In the late Middle Ages, one form of parchment-recycling was very common. Bookbinders often used older parchment sheets as binding material for new books. That's why a lot of manuscripts from the 15th til the 18th century contain hidden, older writings in the back. Until now, hardly anybody succeeded in making them visible.

Mark Walton from the Northwestern University and his colleagues expect a manuscript with writings of the Greek poet Hesiod from the year 1527, to contain a similar hidden secret. The back of the book, as well as the front consisted of a parchment containing fine traces of scratched and washed out parts of text, in a way that one could assume hidden writings there.

Traces of ink at the parchment

The ink had affected the parchment, that's why we could assume a hidden text there.

Waltons colleague Emeline Pouyet describes.

Two columns of older writings could be assumed. The scientists tried to make the text visible with the so called Hyper-Spectral-Technology, which combines recordings of diverse wavelengths to strengthen contrast.

But with no avail: Although the text appeared more sharply, it was not sharp enough to be deciphered. The parchment was too irregularly degraded, the scientists say. That's why they tried it with a different method: They examined the back and the front of the book by an energy-rich x-ray of a synchrotron.

This is how scientists made the hidden text visible again.
© Northwestern University

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