ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the Secret Annotations in a Cypriot Manuscript of the Early Fourteenth Century. It examines various layers of text in manuscript including: main text body written by the scribe, then annotations made by owners and users and finally scholia written in invisible ink. The text is written in a simplified form of learned Byzantine Greek, with some interspersed vernacular vocabulary. The most important point about the scholia is that they are not legible to the naked eye. This practice of adding secret annotations is highly unusual for Greek medical manuscripts. The majority of the text concerns therapeutics, with a focus on diseases that are easy to recognize, such as a cough or hair loss, and notably omits rare diseases. Though, parts of the text are also transmitted in an anonymous iatrosophion, partly written in vernacular Greek. Spells for causing sleep and curing insomnia, for divination through dreams, and for dream revelations were part of ancient magic.
