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Reconstructing Palimpsests: The Tale of Two Hands 

Arabic NF 8 from St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (Egypt) dates from the second half of the 9th century and contains a copy of the Gospels in Arabic, written in Kufic. The codex is remarkable not only for its many layers of erased texts in different languages, but also for its unique composition – some of the leaves consist of small palimpsested fragments sewn together. 

The paper offers a re-evaluation of this unique 'patchwork' manuscript, more specifically the fragments with Latin undertext and their (alleged) role in the reconstruction of a 'Latin scriptorium' on Mount Sinai, while also discussing palimpsest techniques and terminology more generally.