Lost Classical Manuscripts Revealed

[qos]

Shamelessly stolen from thomryng

My head is spinning. . .


For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament. . . .

Read the rest here: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165

Comments

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

Oh my God that's so cool!

Makes me stop and wonder about the randomness of our historical information. What survives, what doesn't and why. We make constellations, really, out of the points we have. Fill in the blanks.

While it's unlikely with the volume of crap we produce, I do wonder if a future civilization had only a fragment of our culture's detritus to shape a picture from, what might we look like? Would they have Masterpiece Theatre? Jerry Springer? Roseanne? The Dick Van Dyke Show? John Grisham books? Where's Waldo? Andy Warhol? Bob Dylan? Britney Spears?

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

Shall we ask ahseratah if she knows something else?

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

Okay, done!

[queenofhalves]

WOW.

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

Very exciting indeed! A couple of questions leap to mind:

• What is the estimated date range represented by the already-known Oxyrhynchus material? Can material of this nature be dated physically, or do fragments have to be dated based on internal textual properties?


• How well prepared is the scholarly community to process and evaluate material of this volume and nature? Reconstructing literary texts -- Hesiod and the like -- is one thing, but turning five thousand fragmentary shopping lists into meaningful social and economic history is another. Are there armies of eager grad students standing by to work on a trove like this?

[qos.livejournal.com]

Good questions (of course). And I'm sure that there *are* armies of grad students willing to work on this. I'm sure there will be junk mixed up in it, but evidently there is already some new stuff among the finds. Time will tell.

[toesontheground.livejournal.com]

Wow!