"I came across conflicting references to Bede's History in Rome, some pointing to its existence and some indicating it was lost. When its existence was confirmed by the library and the manuscript was digitised for us, we were extremely excited to find that the manuscript contained the Old English version of Caedmon's Hymn and that it was embedded in the Latin text."
The newly identified leaf corresponds to page 123 of the Palimpsest and contains part of Archimedes' treatise On the Sphere and the Cylinder, specifically Book I, Propositions 39 to 41. Much of the mathematical text remains legible, despite later alterations to the manuscript.
The best fictional detectives are famed for their intuition, an ability to spot some seemingly ineffable discrepancy. Peter Wollny, the musicologist behind last week's world sensational revelation of two previously unknown works by Johann Sebastian Bach, had a funny feeling when he chanced upon two intriguing sheets of music in a dusty library in 1992. His equivalent of the Columbo turn, from mere hunch to unravelling a secret, would take up half his life.