Re: Ancient Documents being deciphered

Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

>
> According to this article,
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165,
> the famed Oxyrhynchus Papyri are starting to yield up their secrets.
> (Well, famed for some; I confess I didn't know about them). It's a huge
> treasure-trove of ancient fragments found over a century ago, but most
> of them are illegible. Now they're applying some infrared detecting
> technology and making out some of the documents for the first time.
> Apparently in just four days they've made some momentous discoveries,
> and they say that this could expand the amount of great classical Greek
> works we have by a full 20%. Well, look at the article; according to
> it, this is pretty significant.

Dozens of volumes of Oxyrhynchus papyri have been published -- I have
the one with Greek tachygraphic (shorthand) mss. (The EES was emptying
out its warehouse about 10 years ago and sold off lots of titles no one
wanted.)

The stuff that may be about to come out of Pompeii/Herculaneum will be
much more important -- an actual library preserving entire scrolls in
conditions similar to the scraps from Egypt.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...