Complete Extant Works of Hero of Alexandria, Vol. 2

XX

INTRODUCTION.

Since the manuscripts point to an archetype in my opinion, we naturally have only one recension of the Mechanics before us, which in the manuscripts is attributed to Kosta ben Luka from Baalbek, whereas the Arabic source works discussed above do not name a translator of the Mechanics. In the Arabic title and the heading of the first book, it is stated that Kosta (K has Kostantin in the heading) ben Luka prepared the translation into Arabic by order of the Caliph Abul Abbâs Ahmed ibn al-Mu'tasim al-Musta'în (862–866) from the Greek. There is complete agreement among the manuscripts in the arrangement of the individual books and paragraphs. The Leiden Codex, and in agreement with it also the one from Constantinople, has rearranged some parts in the first book; these are indicated in the first edition in the notes to the text and placed in the correct position, as is beautifully confirmed by the Cairo and London manuscripts.

The already mentioned first edition of the Arabic Mechanics was based solely and exclusively on the Leiden manuscript. While it is generally difficult to edit a text from only one manuscript, which is not even a good one and also very sparsely punctuated, the difficulties increase quite significantly when dealing with technical subjects, as is the case here. In this instance, one must look for some clues from the text to gain clarity about the technical aspects and then, through careful groping and testing, see how the author seeks to represent his subject linguistically. In doing so, one must occasionally read more between the lines than what is written in them. Although the French editor strove to also view his text critically, and succeeded in correcting a number of minor mistakes by the copyist, he still made some