An intriguing sequel to the tale of Merlin has sat unseen within the bindings of an Elizabethan deeds register for nearly 400 years. Researchers have finally been able to reveal it with cutting-edge techniques.
It is the only surviving fragment of a lost medieval manuscript telling the tale of Merlin and the early heroic years of King Arthur’s court.
In it, the magician becomes a blind harpist who later vanishes into thin air. He will then reappear as a balding child who issues edicts to King Arthur wearing no underwear….
Now, the 700-year-old fragment of Suite Vulgate du Merlin – an Old French manuscript so rare there are less than 40 surviving copies in the world – has been discovered by an archivist in Cambridge University Library, folded and stitched into the binding of the 16th-Century register.
Using groundbreaking new technology, researchers at the library were able to digitally capture the most inaccessible parts of the fragile parchment without unfolding or unstitching it. This preserved the manuscript in situ and avoided irreparable damage – while simultaneously allowing the heavily faded fragment to be virtually unfolded, digitally enhanced and read for the first time in centuries….
Down in the basement of the library, in a small photographic studio dominated by a multispectral camera that cost over £100,000 ($125,000), the lab’s chief photographic technician Amélie Deblauwe says: “The specialist imaging techniques that were employed on the Merlin fragment revealed details that would not be visible to the naked eye.”
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