List of Web Sites

This is a list of unsorted links to various Euclid-related pages and some further commentary. I've singled out the first four links which I consider to be four of the most important extant manuscripts. 

These are the 888 AD Theon manuscript, the Pre-Theon Vatican 190 manuscript, and the Greek to Latin translation from Sicily (translation made in the 12th, but this copy is 13/14th century)

I've also added some links and discussion on Adelard I manuscript as well as one link to an early Arabic manuscript.  

As far as I can tell, there is, surprisingly, no complete early Adelard I manuscript available online in the UK. Balliol College MS 257 is digitized but not very well, with a number of pages cropped. The only fully digitized copies are in Belgium and the Vatican and possibly elsewhere that I haven't checked. Given that Adelard is one of the most famous early British scholars, it is quite surprising that no online copy is available in the UK.  The British Library may have something, such as the MS Burney 275, but I've found the British Library website to be very unreliable to access. Burney MS 275 is also a somewhat mixed-up manuscript. It contains parts of Adelard I, II, III, with only fragments of each. For example, it only contains 6 folios of Adelard I (302-308)

NOTE:

The British Library suffered a major cyberattack in 2023, which made its online manuscript service unavailable. As of May 2024, this valuable service is still unavailable. Certain links given below will, therefore, not work.

As of July 2025, some works are reappearing. The only Euclid manuscript that is currently available at the British Library is the Burney MS 275, folios 293r-335r).  The library gives virtually no information on this manuscript, even claiming it to be 16th century, which can't be right. It's an early 14th century manuscript. As noted above, the MS contains a mix of Adelard I, II, and III versions of the Elements. According to Menso Folkerts (Euclid's Elements in the Middle Ages) the contents are: Adelard I: f.302-308, s.XIV (VII 3 - VIII 25); Adelard II: f.293-302, ca. A.D.1300 (I - VII 2); Adelard III:  f.308-335, s.XIV (IX - XV 3).  The full contents of the manuscript is given at the bottom of this page, which I obtained from Busard and Folkerts' book: Robert of Chester's (?) Redaction of Euclid's Elements, the so-called Adelard 11 Version.

You'll find Pythagoras' theorem on f.294v.  The date for the manuscript is apparently  1309–1316.  AD. I have an image of the first page (293r) at the bottom of this web page that shows neat Gothic script handwriting, with some very ornate lettering as well as completely off topic small figures, such as a hunter chasing a presumably wild pig with his hound at the top of the page and two knights (with tails?)  fighting each other at the bottom of the page. The ornate first letter is of interest because it shows a woman (possibly the muse of geometry) teaching stonemasons various stone-cut ornamentations from the table in front of her.

Important Early Manuscripts

Bodleian D'Orville 888 AD Copy of Euclid  (Greek)

The Vatican 190 PEYRARD Manuscript (Greek)

The 7373 Greek to Latin Edition by Sicilian Annonymous Translator (Latin)

Arabic Manuscripts

I couldn't find any early online Arabic editions of Euclid except for this one which is a little later by al-Tusi. I wasn't able to determine what is was based on.

Euclid.; Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, 1201-1274 translator; This copy dated 1594

Adelard I Manuscripts - Translation from Arabic to Latin

Fully Digitized:

Balliol College MS 257, 12th century, appears to be fully digitized. Mentioned by Heath, 1925 as  Ball. Coll. 257I, Chap 8. The digitized copy is, however, not well photographed, with a number of pages heavily cropped. Surprisingly the photographs are stored on flickr.

Vatican  Reg Lat. 1137, fully digitized (listed by Folkerts) - it looks like only a very small part of this is Adelard I. Folkerts suggests f.73-74 to include X 24, X 27

Bruges MS 529 designated B by Busard, fully digitized (listed by Folkerts). The writing is neat enough that it is possible to read the text in this manuscript with enough patience. It appears that many of the figures at least for Book I were not included in this manuscript. They disappear around proposition 6 and reappear in proposition 44. 

Bodleian Oxford, MS. Arch. Selden. B. 13, 13th century, late, 111 folios are available online at 

Harley MS 5404 - Currently not available due to a cyber attack. As mentioned by Heath 1926 as Herleian No. 5404, Chap 8

Partially  Digitized

Glasgow, Latin, Sp Coll MS Gen. 1115,  dated 4 December 1480

   MS. Arch. Selden. B. 13

Not Digitized

 Oxford, Trinity College MS. 47, Latin, this is the designed 'O' manuscript by Busard and perhaps the oldest (Folkerts). Probably 13th/14 century.

Further information on MS 47 can be found here, but the information doesn't look correct as it suggests this copy is "now tentatively attributed to Robert of Ketton". Robert of Ketton is also more commonly called Robert of Chester who is considered to have written the Adelard II manuscripts not Adelard I manuscripts since most, if not all other literature states the Adelard I manuscripts are based on Adelard's own personal translation. It also claims there are only 5 manuscripts in existence but Menso Folkerts lists 7, although some of these are very incomplete.  The Folkerts list doesn't include the Glasgow manuscript possibly because it's too late (1480)

D-OrvilleBodleian Library 70,  located at Oxford (Latin, this is the designated 'D' manuscript by Busard), 14th century

Of this list, the Belgium manuscript (MS 529), is by far the most accessible.

Two things I came across that appear distinctive about the Adelard I books is in Book III on circles:

a) The first is that Proposition 12 is missing from copies of Adelard I. This is a small proposition that proves that when two circles touch, their centers pass through the point of contact. 

b) The second difference is Adelard I merges proposition 35 and 36 which he numbers 34. 

As a result of these differences, Adelard I has 35 propositions in Book II, while Heath's Euclid has  37. There has been a suggestion that Preposition 12 was inserted by Heron. This comes from a remark one can find in Gerard Cremona's translation of the commentary of Al-Nayrizi. Al-Nyrizi says in what we would call Proposition 12, but he calls "The Eleventh Figure of the Third Treatise"  because he merges 11 and 12 together, that "Heron said: Lo, in this figure the mathematician fixed the two circles...". Maybe Adelard didn't add the proposition to his translation because he thought it didn't belong, and Al-Nyrizi didn't pull it out as a separate proposition.  John Casey, in his 1885 edition of Euclid (p120), actually says that Prop XI and XII can be combined into one general proposition. 

References:

1, Heath, 1926 EUCLI, D The Thirteen Books of The Elements.  https://archive.org/details/EuclidsElementsBooksIIIVolume1Heath/Euclid%27s_Elements_Books_I-II_Volume_1-Heath/

2 Busard, The first Latin translation of Euclid's Elements commonly ascribed to Adelard of Bath, 1983, https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_first_Latin_translation_of_Euclid_s/o2QPsb-IjgwC?hl=en

Manuscripts used by Heiberg:

From Heiberg's book EUCLIDIS OPERA OMNIA, Volume 1, 1883 we have the following manuscripts listed on page VIII-IX:

P - Peyrard Gr. 190 copy (9th century)

B - Bodleian  888AD (9th century)

F - Floirentine Laurentian MS. XXVIII  (Plut. 28.3, Greek)
Note the library recently changed the URL, the above is current and works as of 4/28/2025 

V - Viennese MS. Philos. Gr. No. 103; (Greek)

b - MS. numbered 18-19 in the Comunal Library at Bologna (Greek)

p - Paris Gr. 2466 (12th century)

Heath adds to this list:

q = Paris MS. 2344, folio;  (12th century)

Other links:

Euclid of Alexandria:    https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Euclid/

 David Joyce's Euclid Page:      https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/elements/toc.html

Reading Euclid in Greek: https://mysite.du.edu /~etuttle/classics/nugreek/contents.htm

Life of Euclid: https://peakd.com/euclid/@harlotscurse/the-elements-of-euclid

Bodleian D'Orville Translated to English:   https://www.claymath.org/library/historical/euclid/

Wikipedia Page on Euclid's Elements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_Elements

List of Vatican Manuscripts: https://macrotypography.blogspot.com/2016/02/vatican-euclid-online.html

List of Manuscripts at Boston University Library:  https://library.brown.edu/exhibits/archive/math/textfr.html

Oliver Byrne's Euclid on the Web: https://www.c82.net/euclid/

Richard Fitzpatrick Translation of Heiberg's Greek Edition:  https://www.cs.umb.edu/~eb/370/euclid/EuclidBook1.pdf

Greek Mathematicians Timeline: https://mathigon.org/timeline

Heath's Euclid on the Web: https://:www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0086%3Abook%3D1%3Atype%3DDef%3Anumber%3D1   

Euclid's Elements in the Middle Ages:   https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/folkerts/folkerts.html

Math Manuscripts at the Vatican: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/math.html

Some Images from Manuscripts: https://jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net/amp/topics/elements+of+euclid

Some Commentary on  Vat. gr. 190, called P:   https://www.  historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2363

Kronecker Wallis Kickstarter Project: https://www.orvill.com/projects/1174653512/euclids-elements-completing-oliver-byrnes-work

Stephen Wolfram's Analysis: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/09/the-empirical-metamathematics-of-euclid-and-beyond/

Biography of Euclid:  https://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/webtexts/bioeucli.htm

Erhard Ratdolt:  https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667076/

Proposition 2: https://gogeometry.com/geometry/euclid_elements_book_i_2_straight_line_equal.htm

Gothic Architecture and Euclid: https://www.sbebuilders.com/tools/geometry/treatise/Applied-Geometry.html

Images of Diagrams: https://www.davidboeno.org/GROEUVRE/I1p/orville.html

Long Commentary of Medieval Manuscripts: https://www2.hf.uio.no/polyglotta/index.php?page=volume&vid=67

Oldest extant diagrams from Euclid:    https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/papyrus/papyrus.html

Finding Euclid on Pot Shards: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/evidence-elements

Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford Collection: https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/Euclid/ts/ts.html

List of links to manuscripts: https://www.mathdiagrams.org/latin-euclid

Side-by-side translation, English, Latin and  Chinese: https://www2.hf.uio.no/polyglotta/index.php?page=volume&vid=67

Renaissance Editions of Euclid's Elements:  http://www.sphere.univ-paris-diderot.fr/IMG/pdf/en_renaissanceeditionseuclidelements_caracteristics.pdf

Page f.293r from Burney MS 275 shows the first page of Euclid's Elements, Adelard II. The contents of the manuscript of relevance are given below and were obtained verbatim from "Robert of Chester's (?) Redaction of Euclid's Elements, the so-called Adelard 11 Version". As you can see, the manuscript has quite a mix of topics related to mathematics, which were part of the medieval quadrivium and trivium.

DATE: about 1300 (f.293r-302r). 1118 pp.

General description: Catalogue (1840), pp.69-70.

Contents:

In the first part of the manuscript there are several treatises on grammar, rhetorics, logic, and philosophy. There follow:

1. f.293r-302r: Euclid, Elementa, version II.

2. f.302r-308r: Euclid, Elementa, version I, books VII. 3 - VIII.25. (In VII. 2 the manuscript gives the enunciation of version I , but the proof of version II, manuscripts BeErPcPe.) [F16; Oc4; T4; Vi6]

3. f.308r-335r: Euclid, Elementa, version III, books IX - XV.2. Inc.: Si fuerint duo numeri superficiales similes. [Ba1; Ba3; Lf3; Oc2; Og1; Og6; Og8; Vf4; Vf5; Vi4]

4. f.336r-359r: Boethius, De institutione arithmetica. Inc.: In dandis accipiendisque muneribus. [B19; Ch2; Me1; Od1; T1; Vf1; Vi1; W1]

5. f. 359 v -390r: Boethius, De musica. Inc.: Omnium quidem perceptio sensuum ita sponte ac naturaliter. [Ch5; E3; F3; Od3; Od6; T2]

6. f. 390 v - 560 v : Ptolemy, Almagest. Inc.: Quidam princeps nomine albuguafe. TK 1245.

f.293r-302r. Contains books I - VII.2, with proofs. VII. 2 has the proof according to version II, but the enunciation according to version I. Each proof precedes the respective enunciation, except of III.1-2. After V. 7

( V, 107-118 ) and before V .8(V, 119-140) there is V .17 V, 196-210). There are diagrams in books I-VI, none of which has letters. The propositions are not numbered. There are no marginal notes.