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Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been used for writing, scraped off, and used again for some other subject. Because of the nature of survival, most palimpsests known to modern scholarship are parchment -- animal hide used for writing which rose in popularity in western Europe after the 6th century A.D. Though periods and regions where papyrus manuscripts were in common use less commonly reused their writing media -- papyrus and paper were always cheaper than animal hide media -- some papyrus palimpsests do survive.

See Archimedes Palimpsest.


Ancient craters whose relief has disappeared leaving only a "ghost" of a crater are known as palimpsests.



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