Palimpsest is the name for a particular kind of manuscript in which a text has been erased to allow the page to be re-used for a subsequent work. The term dates from well before the introduction of paper, when scribes wrote on parchment or vellum. Because both of these kinds of surface are made from animal skins (goat or sheep) they are highly durable, allowing them to be scraped back and re-written. As a result, during times when writing surfaces were difficult to come by, or demand outstripped supply, whole books or scrolls were erased to make room for newer or (what at the time was considered) more important works. Sometimes, heretical or ‘pagan’ works were overwritten with biblical text in order to sanctify or neutralise the older writings.

Often the previous works were not completely erased, or left enough of an impression on the surface, so that scholars have since been able to decipher what was written before. In recent times archaeologists have made additional finds through the use of digital technologies, together with a range of multi-spectral photographic techniques. The study of palimpsests has led to discoveries of lost works by Euclid, Archimedes, St John Chrysostom, Cicero, Seneca… one particular Qur’anic work has been dated to within fifteen years of the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

Palimpsest seems to be one of those peculiarly archaic words destined to the dusty corners of a few highly specialised subjects, yet, in truth, we should be using this word regularly. Pretty much every piece of information we have on our computers (i.e. everything these days) is a digital, multi-layered, hyper-palimpsest: the result of information written and over-written on previously erased surfaces carried out so often that, had they needed to be physically re-prepared so many times, they would have worn transparent and disintegrated.

Every time you transfer an image from your camera, to your computer, to your iPad, to someone else’s, to… you take up space on your hard drive or memory card which you’re likely to soon delete again. The web page you’re reading now will soon be replaced by something else, even though we assume it remains ‘somewhere’. Indeed digital technology has re-written the meaning of the word original. Ask yourself, where are all the original photos you took? You probably erased them a long time ago, but you still have the originals on your computer, don’t you?