Epiphanius of Salamis, Weights and Measures (1935) Preface to the online edition

This work is lost in the Greek original, although the majority of the first half is cited by other authors.  A Syriac translation, with slight expansions, exists complete, and this translation was made from it.  The book was published in 1935, but the copyright does not seem to have been renewed, and the translation is therefore in the public domain in the USA.

Deviations from the Greek are highlighted. Not all the footnotes have been transcribed: indeed originally I did not intend to transcribe many.  However the scanning software -- Abbyy Finereader 7 -- did such a good job that I had hardly anything to do to include most of them.  Some 20 or so were omitted, as concerned solely with details of the Syriac text.  I regret my inability to transcribe Hebrew or Syriac letters -- words so written have been replaced with one or more '@' symbols.  

The printed text also contains small monochrome pictures of the pages of manuscript A, and a full collation of manuscript B.  Neither are included here.  To transcribe the latter would involve immense effort.  I only have access to a photocopy of the book, and the photocopied images of the manuscript pages are not very good.  I may place these on the CDROM in due course, if I can get reasonable results from them.

Finally the Greek text where presented has been rendered for the first time on this site using unicode, with the Windows Palatino Linotype font.  I do not claim to have solved all the mysteries of doing this, so apologise for any display problems.

Roger PEARSE
23rd July 2005

This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2005.  All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.