Digitizing Literary Treasures Leads To New Finds 132
storagedude writes "The WSJ has a cool article on how the race to digitize literary treasures has led to a trove of new discoveries. Quoting: 'Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable — blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians ... By taking high-resolution digital images in 14 different light wavelengths, ranging from infrared to ultraviolet, Oxford scholars are reading bits of papyrus that were discovered in 1898 in an ancient garbage dump in central Egypt. So far, researchers have digitized about 80% of the collection of 500,000 fragments, dating from the 2nd century B.C. to the 8th century A.D. The texts include fragments of unknown works by famous authors of antiquity, lost gospels and early Islamic manuscripts.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Better not show those "Lost gospels" to the chu (Score:4, Informative)
Well to the media a conspiracy theory sells better than the plain truth...
Please also tell that to Dan Brown before he spills out his next badly researched book full of historical errors!
Those gospels have been known for ages and have been omitted in the 5th century for many reasons one of them in many cases was that they were unreliable and often written by third parties trying to promote an agenda. Have in mind early christianity was split way more than we are today and everyone could run his/her religious and monetary agenda on top of the religion.
Often those gospels also were folk tales written down which can be attributed to the area of folk legends nothing more!
Re:FP (Score:5, Informative)
Well doesn't that bring to mind the original principle of censorship, not to protect the people but to protect the leaders from wrath of the people. One might wonder whether more truth might be found in an ancient garbage dump than in a ancient royal library.
Actually if you want to know what you might find in an ancient garbage dump just look at Pompeii most of the stuff to be found at the walls or ruins are pornography, ancient advertisements (especially for hookers) and political graffity.
So nothing really changes!
Re:Jesus (Score:3, Informative)
That is very interesting. Maybe they find evidence of the existence of Jesus, or maybe text about his life that were written when he was still actually on Earth.
Well there is historical evidence, you just have to read the Bellum Judaicum by Flavius Josephus, the most important historian of this time and he has a special 10 liner about Jesus (speaking very favorable about him although he was not christian/jewish).
Re:Jesus (Score:2, Informative)
...which is widely regarded in academic circles to be inserted by a much later author
Re:Oxyrhynchus (Score:3, Informative)
In addition to Oxyrhynchus, significant finds have been made at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
If those ones take your fancy more than the ones from Oxyrhynchos -- and there are some good reasons why they might -- you might find it useful to have these links at your disposal:
For texts, the Big Two sites are Oxyrhynchos and Herculaneum (though, IIRC, the idea of using multispectral imaging for damaged manuscripts was first got from trying to decipher the Dead Sea scrolls).
What's distinctive about Herculaneum is the finding of the works of the philosopher Philodemos, as noted above. Editions have started to appear in the last two decades; I think there's at least one translation available. Oxyrhynchos is overall much more important, though. Oxyrhynchos doesn't have a Philodemos, but that's more than compensated for by the sheer quantity of papyri -- in the first century of publication only about 1-5% have been edited and published so far, and that isn't because they've been slacking off. No complete literary works have emerged from Oxyrhynchos -- but we do have gajillions of letters to a relative who lives in the next town over, contracts, land deeds, shipping lists, shopping lists; but also a few bits of literary stuff -- tiny bits of lost plays, about a thousand lines of an otherwise lost epic called the Catalogue of Women, heaps of pieces of texts of which we already had complete copies, and other odds and ends. And yes, in response to the sibling post, ancient porn too. (Well, I know of one sex manual by Philainis, at least.)
Re:Jesus (Score:3, Informative)