ERC Advanced Grant · 2024
Gesius’ Commentaries on Galen: Recovering lost works through a mixed-method approach
Palimpsests have yielded spectacular new discoveries in the area of ancient texts: hitherto lost works are recovered and can be read again. We recently identified a set of five palimpsests which will radically change the way in which we view the history of medicine in late antique Alexandria and the transmission of medical knowledge from Greek via Syriac into Arabic. These palimpsests contain Commentaries by Gesius (ca. 450–530s) in Syriac translation on two works by the famous Greek physician Galen (ca. 129–216), namely Mixtures and Natural Faculties. Gesius emerged as the most prominent of the iatrosophists or professors of medicine in late antique Alexandria, a period that had a…
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