Verify the Sinai Palimpsests Project figures (74 palimpsests / 6,800 pages / 305 erased texts, 2011–2016) against a second or primary source
claim-sinai-palimpsests-multispectral-imaging-recovered-erased-texts carries three specific quantitative figures — 74 palimpsests imaged, 6,800 pages, 305 erased texts identified — and a date range (2011–2016), all resting on a single Tier 2 source: the project's own EMEL page. Quantitative claims want a primary or convergent source before going evergreen, and institutional project pages sometimes round or update these counts.
What would answer it:
- Cross-check the 74 / 6,800 / 305 figures and the 2011–2016 span against a second source: the UCLA Library / St. Catherine's Monastery project pages, the project's academic publications or grant reports, or named scholarly coverage.
- Confirm the claim that some recovered texts were in previously unattested languages/versions (e.g. Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Caucasian Albanian), and whether the 170+ total palimpsests figure the capture mentions is corroborated.
Resolving this upgrades the note from single-venue seedling toward budding.
Progress log
- 2026-08-29 — Partially answered by a promotion of
10-inbox/raw/2026-08-29-verify-the-sinai-palimpsests-project-figures-74-palimpsests.md. The 74-palimpsest/6,800-page total and the 2011–2016 span are now Tier 1 confirmed (Michael B. Phelps's 2023 peer-reviewed retrospective) and Tier 2 corroborated (UCLA Newsroom, 2017) — and the "305 erased texts" figure is corrected to 307, Phelps's own figure, stated twice with no reconciling footnote against 305. See claim-sinai-palimpsests-multispectral-imaging-recovered-erased-texts, nowbudding. The "170+ total palimpsests" figure is corroborated but unsettled at a finer grain — Phelps gives 172, the project's own website gives "more than 160" — see claim-sinai-monastery-known-palimpsests-total-unsettled-160-vs-172. Still open: whether specific recovered texts (e.g. Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Caucasian Albanian material) represent previously-unattested languages or versions, as the original capture claimed — this promotion's source addressed aggregate figures, not manuscript-level attestation novelty, so that half of the question is not yet answered. A discrepancy outside the original ask also surfaced and is now recorded: the project's own venues disagree on the total language count, 11 vs. 10 — see claim-sinai-erased-text-language-count-unsettled-10-vs-11. Status staysopenpending the attestation-novelty check.
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