This volume explores the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, containing On Simple Drugs by Galen of Pergamum (129–216) from the vantage point of numerous discipline. Greek scholars analyses the source text and argue that the Syriac translation can help improve the Greek text and help us understand it. Syriacists and Arabists then explore the subsequent tradition and argue that later texts who excerpted the Syriac translation, can be used to reconstitute this translation, as they offer indirect evidence. Conservators and scientists detail the methodologies used to decipher the erased undertext, and finally there is a preface to the digital edition of the Syriac translation, as well as two further articles exploring machine learning and the traditional paradigm of describing Greek-Syriac-Arabic translation technique. The volume as a whole shows what can be achieved when colleagues from different disciplines come together to decipher an unreadable text and allow us to see the invisible.
Table of Contents:
List of Figures Notes on Contributors
Introduction PETER E. PORMANN
Proem The Syriac Galen Palimpsest in the Context of the History of Medicine VIVIAN NUTTON
Galen’s Simple Drugs in Greek The Contribution of the Syriac Translation to the Edition of Galen’s Simple Drugs and Foodstuffs VÉRONIQUE BOUDON-MILLOT
Clarification and Systematisation in Pharmacology: Galen, Simple Drugs, books 1–5, with a Note on the Greek Tradition JOHN WILKINS
Battling the Empiricists: Blood, Vipers, and The Fragments of Xenocrates of Aphrodisias CAROLINE PETIT
The Syriac and Arabic Traditions of Simple Drugs The Enigma of Who Translated Galen’s Simple Drugs, Book 9, into Syriac NAIMA AFIF, PETER E. PORMANN, AND NATALIA SMELOVA
Galen’s Simple Drugs in the Syriac Alchemical Tradition MATTEO MARTELLI
Simple Drugs in the Medical Handbook (Kunnāšā) by Īšōʿ bar ʿAlī (ninth century): In Pursuit of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Sources GRIGORY KESSEL
Studies on a Tabular Summary of Galen’s Simple Drugs ascribed to Ḥunayn FABIAN KÄS
Establishing the Syriac Text of Galen’s Simple Drugs: Editorial Technique and Practical Principles PETER E. PORMANN, NAIMA AFIF, SIAM BHAYRO, WILLIAM SELLERS, AND NATALIA SMELOVA
Conserving and Imaging the Syriac Galen Palimpsest Integrating Imaging Technologies to Reveal the Unseen in the Syriac Galen Palimpsest: Exploring the Syriac Galen Palimpsest MICHAEL B. TOTH
A Tale of Two Palimpsests: The Role of Conservation in Revealing the Lost Words of Archimedes and Galen ABIGAIL QUANDT
X-ray Fluorescence Imaging of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest UWE BERGMANN ET AL.
New Perspectives Studying the Syriac Medical Traditions: the Mesopotamian and Classical Greek Legacies SIAM BHAYRO
The Alexandrian Tradition: New Discoveries of Gesius’ Galenic Commentaries in Syriac NAIMA AFIF, PETER E. PORMANN, AND NATALIA SMELOVA
Using Machine Learning Techniques to Improve the Legibility of the Undertext in Palimpsest Studies WILLIAM I. SELLERS
Final Reflections SEBASTIAN BROCK
Bibliography Index locorum General Index
About the Author :
Peter E. Pormann is Professor of Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester. His main interests comprise the Greek medical tradition and its afterlife in Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin; Greek-Syriac-Arabic translation techniques; digital humanities, notably multilingual corpus linguistics along with multispectral image capture and analysis using machine learning; and the reception of classical Greek thought in the modern Arab world. Publications include the Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates (Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Hippocratic Commentaries in the Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic Traditions (Brill, 2021).
