Ptolemy’s treatise on the meteoroscope recovered
Name
s00407-022-00302-w.pdf
Description
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Size
3.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
chbmx6w185U=
Resource type
Journal article
Date published
March 2023
Abstract
The eighth-century Latin manuscript Milan, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, L 99 Sup. contains fifteen palimpsest leaves previously used for three Greek scientific texts: a text of unknown authorship on mathematical mechanics and catoptrics, known as the (three leaves), Ptolemy's (six leaves), and an astronomical text that has hitherto remained unidentified and almost entirely unread (six leaves). We report here on the current state of our research on this last text, based on multispectral images. The text, incompletely preserved, is a treatise on the construction and uses of a nine-ringed armillary instrument, identifiable as the “meteoroscope” invented by Ptolemy and known to us from passages in Ptolemy's and in writings of Pappus and Proclus. We further argue that the author of our text was Ptolemy himself.
Funder
| Funder name | Awards |
Sorbonne Université | |
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung | |
Journal title
Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
ISSN
0003-9519
eISSN
1432-0657
Official URL
Keywords