Definitions for "palimpsest"
A parchment which has been written upon twice, the first writing having been erased to make place for the second. The erasures of ancient writings were usually carried on in monasteries, to allow the production of ecclesiastical texts, such as copies of church services and lives of the saints. The difficulty of recovering the original text varied with the process used to prepare the parchment for a fresh writing; the original texts on parchments which had been washed with lime-water and dried were easily recovered by a chemical process, but those erased by scraping the parchment and bleaching are difficult to interpret. Most of the manuscripts underlying the palimpsests that have been revived are fragmentary, but some are of great historical value. One Syriac version of the Four Gospels was discovered in 1895 in St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis. See also the notes below.
A manuscript that has been written on twice. Usually, the first text is worn out with use, and, rather than buy new parchment, the scribe simply writes over the old text.
A manuscript with two scripts where one has been obliterated by scraping or washing the parchment and writing another text over it. The obliterated script is the underscript and the newer script is the overscript.
A roughly circular spot on icy satellites, thought to identify a former impact crater.
Refers to a landscape in which most of the topographic features are not related to the materials at the land surface but are inherited from a buried surface at depth.
A circular feature on the surface of dark icy moons such as Ganymede and Callisto lacking the relief associated with craters; Pamlimpsests are thought to be impact craters where the topographic relief of the crater has been eliminated by slow adjustment of the icy surface.