Editing Archimedes Palimpsest (section)

===Modern===
The Biblical scholar [[Constantin von Tischendorf]] visited [[Constantinople]] in the 1840s, and, intrigued by the Greek mathematics visible on the palimpsest he found in a [[Greek Orthodox]] library, removed a leaf of it (which is now in the Cambridge University Library). In 1899, the Greek scholar Papadopoulos-Kerameus produced a catalog of the library's manuscripts and included a transcription of several lines of the partially visible underlying text.<ref name=APP/> Upon seeing these lines [[Johan Ludvig Heiberg (historian)|Johan Heiberg]], the world's authority on Archimedes, realized that the work was by Archimedes. When Heiberg studied the palimpsest in Constantinople in 1906, he confirmed that the palimpsest included works by Archimedes thought to have been lost. Heiberg was permitted by the Greek Orthodox Church to take careful photographs of the palimpsest's pages, and from these he produced transcriptions, published between 1910 and 1915, in a complete works of Archimedes. Shortly thereafter Archimedes' [[Greek language|Greek]] text was translated into [[English language|English]] by [[T. L. Heath]]. Before that it was not widely known among mathematicians, physicists or historians.

The manuscript was still in the [[Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem]]'s library (the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre) in Constantinople in 1920.<ref name=Schulz/> Shortly thereafter, during a turbulent period for the Greek community in Turkey that saw a Turkish victory in the [[Greco-Turkish War (1919–22)]] along with the [[Greek genocide]] and the forced [[population exchange between Greece and Turkey]], the palimpsest disappeared from the Greek church's library in Istanbul.

Sometime between 1923 and 1930, the palimpsest was acquired by Marie Louis Sirieix, a "businessman and traveler to the Orient who lived in Paris."<ref name=Schulz/> Though Sirieix claimed to have bought the manuscript from a monk, who would not in any case have had the authority to sell it, Sirieix had no receipt or documentation for a sale of the valuable manuscript. Stored secretly for years by Sirieix in his cellar, the palimpsest suffered damage from water and mold. In addition, after its disappearance from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate's library, a forger added copies of medieval evangelical portraits in gold leaf onto four pages in the book in order to increase its sales value, further damaging the text.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/inside-archimedes-palimpsest.html|title=NOVA – Official Website – Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest|website=[[PBS]]|access-date=2017-08-24|archive-date=2017-08-15|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170815092806/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/inside-archimedes-palimpsest.html|url-status=live}}</ref> These forged gold leaf portraits nearly obliterated the text underneath them, and x-ray fluorescence imaging at the [[Stanford Linear Accelerator Center]] would later be required to reveal it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.slac.stanford.edu/gen/com/slac_pr.html|title=Archimedes Palimpsest – Press Release|access-date=2015-03-16|archive-date=2015-09-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924102700/http://www.slac.stanford.edu/gen/com/slac_pr.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Sirieix died in 1956, and, in 1970, his daughter began attempting quietly to sell the valuable manuscript. Unable to sell it privately, in 1998, she finally turned to [[Christie's]] to sell it in a public auction, risking an ownership dispute.<ref name=Schulz/> The ownership of the palimpsest was immediately contested in federal court in New York in the case of the ''Greek Orthodox [[Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem|Patriarchate of Jerusalem]]'' v. ''[[Christie's]], Inc''. The Greek church contended that the palimpsest had been stolen from its library in Constantinople in the 1920s, during a period of extreme persecution. Judge [[Kimba Wood]] decided in favor of Christie's Auction House on [[laches (equity)|laches]] grounds, and the palimpsest was bought for $2 million by an anonymous American buyer. The lawyer who represented the anonymous buyer stated that the buyer was "a private American" who worked in "the high-tech industry", but was not [[Bill Gates]].<ref name=Hirshfeld/>