Michael B. Phelps
Michael B. Phelps is the executive director of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL) and led the Sinai Palimpsests Project (2011–2016), the multispectral-imaging effort that recovered erased texts from palimpsest manuscripts at St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. He matters to this vault as the project's own primary source: his 2023 peer-reviewed retrospective, published in the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press volume New Light on Old Manuscripts, is the Tier 1 account this vault's Sinai figures now rest on, including the correction of the widely-repeated "305 erased texts" figure to the project's own better-sourced 307.
References
- claim-sinai-palimpsests-multispectral-imaging-recovered-erased-texts — the 74-palimpsest/6,800-page/307-erased-texts headline figures, corrected from an earlier 305 on Phelps's own authority.
- claim-sinai-monastery-known-palimpsests-total-unsettled-160-vs-172 — his 172-known-palimpsests figure against the project website's looser "more than 160."
- claim-sinai-erased-text-language-count-unsettled-10-vs-11 — his full eleven-language breakdown against the project's own "10 languages" shorthand.
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