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.'"
FP (Score:1, Insightful)
Good, now put them online.
Re:Oxyrhynchus (Score:3, Insightful)
Classics sounds a lot like biology then. Information theory, statistics and fast cheap computers have opened up a lot of fields for math geeks. It seems that physics is not longer the only academic application of mathematics.
Re:Oxyrhynchus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jesus (Score:4, Insightful)
There is already evidence for the existence of Jesus - the fact that he was an historical figure is pretty much accepted. Proof that he was actually God - now, that would be the big thing! It's not going to be found, though, for one of two reasons:
a) If it were proven, there would be no more need for faith, and that would undermine the whole raison d'etre of religion.
or
b) It isn't true.
I subscribe to b); YMMV.
Re:Jesus (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually even in early christianity there were two strong philiosophical roots one Arianism just said Christ was not god but a messenger from god, the other one was the Trinitarism was the one chosen by the council of Nicea.
Now take it with a grain of salt, Muslims basically reject Christianity because of trinitarism and follow more the course of early Arianism in their view of god, while many catholic mystics had visions which basically fortified trinitarity.
But in the end, is it really important, I always saw such things as things which distract people from the core of the message which over all this mumbo jumbo seems to be forgotten, and the message is one of peace, forgiveness, trying to help others and no violence!
(This is one of the reasons why I feel so uneasy among many christian groups they simply do not represent the message, I am christian myself, often those who shout loudest we are so holy are the worst by ignoring the core of the message!)
Re:FP (Score:3, Insightful)
Papyrus was valuable at the time. Shopping lists would have been written on pieces of broken ceramics, not on papyrus. And even overdue bills can be instructive. Remember, most of the Minoan Linear B documents are just warehouse records.
Re:Oxyrhynchus (Score:4, Insightful)
Chances are 99.99% that ancient porn was lost
Re:Better not show those "Lost gospels" to the chu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dumpers (Score:3, Insightful)
A good point. And the digitization work of Google has refreshed awareness of the meaning of surviving texts studied by the antiquarians of the 19th Century, especially the more heretical characters like Rev. Robert Taylor.
Re:FP (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, now put them online.
Do ten seconds' googling and you'll find it was done long ago [163.1.169.40] (notice the turn-of-the-century character of the website; believe me, it used to be worse).
Well, it's been partly done. That link only gives digitised images of the papyri that have been published in hardcopy so far -- i.e. the first hundred-odd years of publications. It'll take another few hundred years to finish publishing the Oxyrhynchos papyri.
On the other hand, actually reading the material -- here's [163.1.169.40] a sample of someone practising their handwriting, see how you get on with reading it -- will still be considerably more trouble than it would be if you simply went to a library and looked at a printed text.
Either way, of course, you'll have to learn ancient Greek first. Alas, if you want a translation, you're out of luck. I'm sure Oxford University would be glad if you want to donate the millions of pounds it would require to translate the entire corpus, ... translation isn't cheap. It's simply more economical to impose an entry requirement for studying the material, viz. a knowledge of ancient Greek (and of Hellenistic palaeography), than it would be to find non-existent funding for a translation.
Re:Better not show those "Lost gospels" to the chu (Score:4, Insightful)
Please also tell that to Dan Brown before he spills out his next badly researched book full of historical errors!
Ahh. Another one who doesn't understand the differences between "fiction" and "non fiction".
I do but DB obviously doesnÂt if you follow his interviews. I once made the mistake to open his latest books alone in the description of the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicea he made several historical mistakes intermixing events which often occurred within 150 years!
Just to prove his point.
I dont have a problem with him doing that, my problem with him is that he then talks in front of the camera how long he has researched and he is right on things, while the history books say clearly he is wrong.
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!
And how exactly is that different from the other "accepted" gospels?
You can see that by the historical dates, in which area the gospels can be attributed to and which philosophical context they are. A gnostic gospel for instance easily immediately can be ommitted because gnosticism never made it into christianity before 100 AC also you pretty much have the date of the first occurrence of each gospel and other non canonized texts by historical letters preserved until today.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
(*) unlikely to be good enough for scholars, but at the very least a worthy PR exercise.
Re:Oxyrhynchus (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dumpers (Score:1, Insightful)
"The ancient world was way more open to sex than we are today!"
**********
I have trouble believing that the ancient world had any different stance toward sex than we do today. After all, there is an ocean of pornography available today which does not define the public's attitude toward sex. Imagine what historians of several centuries in the future will think when they find that "archeological treasure trove" of bukkake, goatse, and tubgirl?
Isn't there a reason why we have cliche's about prostitution as the oldest profession, and infidelity as the most popular reason for murder? I think it far more likely that human attitudes toward human sexuality have been *relatively* constant throughout history.
Re:Dumpers (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine what historians of several centuries in the future will think when they find that "archeological treasure trove" of bukkake, goatse, and tubgirl.
Do we have any digital media that lasts that long? I don't think any of those are very prevalent in longer-lasting media such as paper, wood, stone, or plastic. So unless we find new ways to read the corrupted data much like what WSJ is doing with the manuscripts, most of our illicit material will decay.
Isn't there a reason why we have cliché's about prostitution as the oldest profession
How does this mean the ancient world wasn't more open about it?