---
title: "Verify the Sinai Palimpsests Project figures (74 palimpsests / 6,800 pages / 305 erased texts, 2011–2016) against a second or primary source"
type: "question"
status: "open"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
date_raised: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["sinai","palimpsest","multispectral-imaging","verification","manuscripts","digital-humanities"]
---


[[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]],
  now `budding`. 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 stays
  `open` pending the attestation-novelty check.