6η Διάλεξη Σειράς Σεμιναρίων: Ψηφιακή Εργασία

Εδρα UNESCO για τις Ψηφιακές Μεθόδους στις Ανθρωπιστικές και Κοινωνικές Επιστήμες
UNESCO Chair on Digital Methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Σειρά Σεμιναρίων: Ψηφιακή Εργασία
Seminar Series: Digital Work

Χρόνος / Time

Τετάρτη, 17 Μαΐου 2023, 16:00

Wednesday, 17 May 2023, 4:00 p.m.

Τόπος / Place

Θα μεταδοθεί διαδικτυακά μέσω του:

https://www.dept.aueb.gr/el/dmh/LiveSeminar

Ομιλητής / Speaker

Δρ. Δαμιανός Κασωτάκης / Dr. Damianos Kasotakis,

Early Manuscripts Electronic Library

Θέμα / Topic

Sinai Library: How spectral imaging discovers erased writings in palimpsest manuscripts.

Περίληψη / Abstract

One thousand two hundred years ago, a scribe in an isolated monastery in the middle of the desert took a piece of parchment containing ancient texts – and erased it. In the remote desert of Egypt, during the Middle Ages, parchment was a rare writing material. The solution to this problem was provided through the erasing and recycling of manuscripts. Under the new text, however, traces of the original script remained. Today, using state-of-the-art technologies we can read rare and important texts in these multi-layered manuscripts, known as palimpsests.

The lecture "Sinai Library: How spectral imaging discovers erased writings in palimpsest manuscripts.", presents the technical and technological approach to spectral photography as well as the latest notable discoveries from the Sinai Palimpsests Project (2011-2016), which restored ancient lost texts from the Library of the Holy Monastery of Sinai. The Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine’s was founded by Emperor Justinian in the middle of the 6th century AD. The library still preserves one of the most important collections of manuscripts, both in Greek and more than ten other languages. At St. Catherine’s monastery, about 160 palimpsest manuscripts have been discovered, which are a treasure for scholars and scientists   around the globe.

Damianos Kasotakis, PhD

Dr. Damianos Kasotakis has been working for more than a decade in the field of digital humanities. He specializes in spectral imaging of erased and rewritten manuscripts (palimpsests), as well as other damaged written materials (spectral imaging aims to make legible texts that are not easily visible to the human eye). He is also active in the field of large-scale digitization of manuscript collections. He has worked for the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (US based non-profit organization) as well as MegaVision (manufacturer of specialized photographic equipment).

He has trained photographers in spectral imaging both in Europe and the USA. He has worked in digitization projects among others at: St. Catherine’s of the Sinai(Egypt), libraries in Italy (Milan, Turin, Verona, Vercelli), national libraries of Austria, Germany, France, Denmark, Georgia, Armenia, as well as the Cambridge University library, and private collections and museums in the USA.

In 2022, he defended his doctoral thesis on the history of manuscripts photography in the Sinai Monastery.