"Can I have an 'A'?"
Posted on 04/17/2005 6:14:39 AM PDT by bitt
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.
The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye – decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance”.
Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, described the new works as “central texts which scholars have been speculating about for centuries”.
Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar, formerly of University College London, now head of classics at the University of Michigan, said: “Normally we are lucky to get one such find per decade.” One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the poet Archilocos, of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as “invaluable” by Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics campaign.
The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus (“city of the sharp-nosed fish”) in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford’s Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world.
The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy – the Epigonoi (“Progeny”) by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery.
Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the surviving body of lesser work – the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day.
“The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance – especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly,” said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. “The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole.”
...
When it has all been read – mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian – the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection.
Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible.
Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University’s Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum – ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed.
The fragments form part of a giant “jigsaw puzzle” to be reassembled. Missing “pieces” can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis.
Key words from the master of Greek tragedy
Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron.
Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle’s songs, that wakes up those who are asleep.
Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot’s rail.
These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally “The Progeny”), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week’s hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their existence, and this is the first time they have been published.
Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age of Greek civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside and competed with Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
...
Last week’s remarkable finds also include work by Euripides, Hesiod and Lucian, plus a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC.
apparently we can't post from this other source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/04/17/0845214.shtml?tid=146&tid=126&tid=14
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus
Really Old Reading Material Ping.
When they redraw the map of classical civilization they better figure out how to air it on MTV & BET in the form of RAP or it will have absolutely no impact on culture in America.
"Can I have an 'A'?"
they might like THIS:
' . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron'
lol -
next RAP line would be:
'kissin' the hos, slashin' the man, still firin'
Uh-oh...
My theology forbids me to believe that there remains undiscovered scripture in the world.
However, for the same reason I'd like unrestriced access to the Vatican Library and a staff of interpreters, I'd be interested in reading (for notional example) a letter from Luke the Physician to Paul asking how his "thorn in the flesh" was doing, and perhaps naming it (shortness of vision? a poorly healed fracture from being stoned?); or a letter from some otherwise unknown Judean finshmonger to another about how he hadn't seen Simon the Fisherman for years and then saw him preaching on a streetcorner under the name of Simon "the Rock", and how it all seemed to make some sort of sense.
Bests!
I read that book and I really liked it. Liked his other books, too.
Ping.
papyri pong
trash, according to certain cultures...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385166/posts
Key finds in Temple Mount trash heap
Jerusalem, Israel, Apr. 15 (UPI) -- Archaeologists sifting through piles of rubble discarded by Islamic officials from the Temple Mount have found rare artifacts dating to 3,000 years ago.
The artifacts were found in the last five months in a city garbage dump used by Islamic officials six years ago when they built a mosque at an underground area of the Temple Mount, the Jerusalem Post said Friday.
Wow, this is amazing.
What would be more interesting than the plays and poetry would be things like personal letters, which would give us an insight into how these people really lived. I wonder if stuff like that is in that collection.
quite right...I went to the 'London-based, Egypt Exploration Society' website, can't find any updayes - yet -
Now if these had been discovered by Muslims, they would have already been destroyed. Can't have proof of any brilliant civilization, other than their own, ya know.
EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY UNLOCKS SECRETS OF THE ANCIENTS
The Scotsman | Sat 16 Apr 2005 | (Drudgereport.com) Scotsman.com
Posted on 04/16/2005 5:01:00 PM PDT by tricky_k_1972
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385203/posts
First published in 1972, The Word remains a classic of brilliant storytelling, authentic detail and breathtaking narrative power.
And a long forgotten TV mini-series staring David Janson.
The Fugetive chases the forger.
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sweet!! led me to this
Wed 27 Mar 2002
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=332482002
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/659052/posts
CUT OFF by a muddy pool fed by an ancient river, close to the bottom of an excavation 30 metres deep, archaeologists exploring a villa buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 have found two great doors of carbonised wood.
Behind them could lie a lost treasure trove of Roman scrolls, scholars say, part of the celebrated lost library of the Villa of the Papyri. However, a unique chance to recover great classical masterpieces, lost to humanity for 2,000 years, could fall victim to flooding or a new blast from the volcano Vesuvius, they warn. The leading names of ancient Greek and Roman studies in Britain and the United States are pleading for urgent action before it is too late.
The Villa of the Papyri is described as one of the greatest Roman villas discovered in the world. It was a jewel in the crown of the city of Herculaneum, which served as the luxury seaside resort for the neighbouring city of Pompeii. Once the property of the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, its awe-inspiring scale moved one of the modern era’s richest men, John Paul Getty, to build a reconstruction in Malibu, California, and fill it with his extraordinary collection of Greek and Roman artefacts.
In AD79, however, the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii bought terror and death to Herculaneum. A blast of gas at an estimated temperature of 360C swept through the city. It carbonised bread sitting on the table, cupboards, doors, and people, and did the same for the villa’s precious books.
Herculaneum was buried under 20 metres of volcanic mud, which hardened to the consistency of soft rock, and was later capped by the lava from successive eruptions.
The villa was first discovered by well-diggers in the Bay of Naples more than 200 years ago. Early excavations dating back to the 1790s, much of it funded by George IV, then the Prince of Wales, turned up what were first thought to be sticks of charcoal
However, they were recognised on closer inspection as scrolls, turned to charcoal in the first blast of the volcano’s heat. Eventually they were partly unrolled. The heat that had seemingly destroyed them had actually preserved them.
Work to pick out the charred ink of Latin and Greek began with early magnifying glasses. It picked up in the 1990s with multi-spectral imaging technology, first developed by the US space agency, NASA, to study minerals on planet surfaces. Scientists at the Brigham Young University in Utah, working with staff at the National Library in Naples, have continued to decipher writings from more than 10,000 fragments, painstakingly unrolling and reading the documents.
Most have turned out to be works of Greek philosophy, including writings of Epicurus missing for more than 2,000 years. But it is what lies hidden that is tantalising scholars. Early digs discovered only one level of the villa, with the scrolls; later excavations have shown at least four more levels. "They have discovered these huge doors on the second level," explained the archaeologist leading the dig, Francesca Auricchio. "They have small round windows, closed by glass, which was very precious. This means it was a very important part of the house."
Investigation of a small area behind the doors suggests the rooms there are rich in paintings, statues, and mosaics, Ms Auricchio said. But far more compelling, in this case, is the prospect of finding copies of Virgil’s Aeneid, missing volumes of Livy’s History of Rome, or lost works by Sophocles or even Aristotle. The Villa of the Papyri has already yielded nearly 2,000 scrolls, but a substantial part of the only intact Roman library may lie undiscovered.
"People are very concerned to save this thing," said Richard Janko, professor of Greek at University College, London. He was one of eight scholars who signed a recent letter pleading for the "vital excavations" at the villa to go ahead.
"Flooding now poses a grave danger to the building and its contents," the letter warned. "The excavation must be completed, and the building preserved," it stressed. "Most importantly the books must be brought to light."
Vesuvius last erupted in 1944; but with earthquakes in Naples in 1980, the risk of further eruptions is considered high.
The novelist Robert Harris has added his voice to those pleading for a renewed excavation that experts say could cost £15 million or more. "In cultural terms," he wrote, "this is about as important as it gets."
Many of the original scrolls turned up in boxes, with some scattered across the villa’s garden. It has led to visions of a desperate rush to save some of the precious library as the volcano exploded; less dramatic theories suggest that the scrolls were routinely moved from a storage area to a reading room.
Prof Janko describes the current excavations as something out of Dante’s Inferno; a great gash in the ground, 30 metres deep, with the water level at the bottom kept low by a pump. "There are actually walls sticking out of the water; the wooden doors are there, still intact, and we don’t know what’s behind," he told The Scotsman. "It was an enormously expensive excavation, and the money ran out. I think it cost $30 million [£20 million]. The Italian authorities feel, not without some justice, that they have a lot to look after already ."
However, he added: "The reason we feel this site is special, is that it is the only place in the ancient world where we know that a library was buried in conditions that preserved it.
"We have lots of ancient buildings, but a limited number of ancient works of literature, and this is the place we are most likely to find them."
How the secrets of the scrolls are brought to light
THE ANCIENT city of Herculaneum was destroyed in the same volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii in AD79.
Whereas Pompeii was regarded as a commercial centre, Herculaneum is characterised as a seaside resort town with many wealthy residents.
Hot mud that enveloped Herculaneum helped to preserve the buildings over 2,000 years.
The partially excavated Villa of the Papyri, which was initially explored by the Bourbons through a series of tunnels in 1752, is where all 1,800-2,000 Herculaneum papyri were found.
Windows that can be seen on the lower level would have faced the sea; scholars believe that other papyri may still be buried here on this level.
Although they were excavated in the 18th century, many of the scrolls are so badly carbonised and compacted that scholars have not yet been able to unroll them or learn anything about their contents.
The papyrus layers were rolled around a wooden rod, or umbilicus; many scrolls have a hole in the centre because the umbilicus is missing.
Six of the scrolls were given to Napoleon Bonaparte as a gift, and a fragment of one of them is typical of the fragile condition of the carbonised documents. Despite the deteriorated condition of the Napoleon scroll’s fragment, however, scholars have determined that it refers to the great Roman poet, Virgil.
In the Officina dei Papiri at the National Library in Naples, scholars from around the world are working to read scroll fragments and produce or modify transcriptions of the ancient philosophical texts. In a one-year assignment, a team led by Steve and Susan Booras, of Brigham Young University, Utah, conducted multi-spectral imaging on carbonised scroll fragments at the National Library.
The team imaged more than 10,000 fragments during a one-year assignment at the library, where the scrolls are stored.
This is marvelous, and the newly deciphered snippets are wonderful.
amazing what we trip over while cruising the net...
I wouldn't have seen this without a 'ping' in a thousand years....
The Temple Mount trash: ongoing evil desecration. If the Israeli's did that to a Muslim hotel, for heaven's sake, the world would scream bloody murder. But Muslims, members of that peace-loving religion, can do no wrong.
The texts in Gao'uld are causing the most excitement.
Are you serious?
Are you serious?
Very.
I believe God has given us all the Scripture He intended. Any additional items, even written by the same hands, would be interesting reading, even instructional, but not Scripture.
And with Luther I say, "Here I stand, I can do no other."
Thanks :)
The Bible is what Justinian said it was. Truth is from many sources, IMHO
I will hold to mine.
You got the Vulgate there?
take it outside, please....
Stargate?? you actually made me Google....
What's the matter, can't stand a polite discussion?
Cool, now maybe we'll get some original Euripides "knock, knock" jokes ;-)
"What would be more interesting than the plays and poetry would be things like personal letters, which would give us an insight into how these people really lived. I wonder if stuff like that is in that collection."
I agree that would be great, but I do doubt it. These are works from a library, and I can't see that they would be collecting personal letters. The big thing right now though is that we really don't know what's on the papyri, as there are thousands of them. Let's keep our fingers crossed :)
More stuff from dead white males
It don't mean nothin ;^)
That, or some Burma-Shave rhyme...
I am sure the Catholic Church in Rome is going to have indigestion over this.
But I say, BRING ON THE CLASSICS!!!!
Any chance these documents could have come from the library in Alexandria, Egypt?
From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius
Born 10 B.C.
Murdered and Deified A.D. 54
By; Robert Graves.
"Euripides?"
"No,they were already torn when I gottem."
YAWN!!! I don't think CATHOLICS nor the Vatican are going to be upset by this, not after the papacy of John Paul II. Many of us CATHOLICS, and many NON-Catholics as well, are intrigued by the calls for his sainthood, and that he be called "the Great," and "Doctor of the Church."
In other words, we already know which are the true Gospels just as much as other Christians already know. NOTHING will change that.
So, yes, by all means, BRING ON THE CLASSICS. The recently departed Pope was also an actor, playwright, polyglot, philosopher, professor, and an average blue collar worker during the Nazi occupation of Poland. We who look to his example, with admiration and NOT with slavish dependency, are therefore not fazed in the least by any forthcoming "revelation" from newly uncovered "classics," for Jesus Christ has already given us that revelation with the Holy Spirit to guide us unceasingly.
Consider the possibility that Christians of OTHER denominations are just as likely, if not MORE so, to have indigestion over this discovery.
Whatever increases our understanding of history, of Western civilization, of the human condition throughout the ages, of the varieties of religious experience, is therefore to be welcomed and studied in depth.
I am always amused when Freepers try to put down their fellow Freepers who just happen to be Catholic.
You missed my point, which was not to put Catholics down, but that since the Catholic Church in Rome gets upset over a fictional novel the "Da Vinci Codes"; they (the Catholic leaders in Rome) might mentally crack at people reading the first editions and unedited materials of the New Testament.
They get upset about the "Da Vinci Codes" because people are reading it and believing it is fact, not fiction.
The Word
by Irving Wallace
The Vanished Library
by Luciano Canfora
tr by Martin Ryle
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