Wow, quite a find! Good one for the weekly digest ping as well. Thanks a fool in paradise.
Posted on 07/13/2018 4:18:58 PM PDT by LibWhacker
A team of scientists at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has discovered that a 1,800-year-old papyrus from the Basel Papyrus Collection is an ancient medical text from late antiquity and that it was likely written by the famous Roman physician Galen.
The University Library in Basel possesses a collection of 65 papyri, mostly in Greek and several in Coptic, Hieratic and Latin.
Less than half of this collection was published by Ernst Rabel in 1917 in Papyrusurkunden der Öffentlichen Bibliothek der Universität zu Basel.
With mirror writing on both sides, one of the Basel papyri — dubbed P.Basel 1A — has puzzled generations of scholars.
Now, thanks to a two-year grant from the Swiss National Foundation, University of Basel’s Professor Sabine Huebner and colleagues are working to make this and other Basel papyri available to both the scholarly audience and the general public.
“The majority of papyri are documents such as letters, contracts and receipts,” Professor Huebner said.
“P.Basel 1A is a literary text, however, and is more valuable. What’s more, it contains a previously unknown text from antiquity.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
Translation: “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning!”
Cool stuff. A Communist babe from China, in the 1970s, went back and looked at 2000 year old texts there and found out how to deal with malaria. She won the Nobel for it, although the reason for her work was to help North Vietnam win the war there. There are likely some real gems in those ancient texts.
Amazing story...even if she was (and is) a hard-core Leftist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou
1,800 year letters, contracts and receipts.
Some things never change.
unfortunately no one can read his handwriting
“drink your Ovaltine”
bmp
Wow, quite a find! Good one for the weekly digest ping as well. Thanks a fool in paradise.
An ancient tradition in the field of medicine. My father was a doctor so I speculate with a degree of certainty that medical schools require at least a semester of study in illegible handwriting.
Only pharmacists can read it. I believe their tradition hails back to the Oracles of Delphi, the seers who entered caves where drug like vapors emanated from the earth allowing them to prophesy the future. And read prescriptions.
interesting
Considering the political hurdles, a remarkable feat!
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