1.5 Million Pages of Ancient Manuscripts Online 79
New submitter LordWabbit2 sends this quote from an AP report:
"The Vatican Library and Oxford University's Bodleian Library have put the first of 1.5 million pages of ancient manuscripts online. The two libraries in 2012 announced a four-year project to digitize some of the most important works of their collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and early printed books. Among the first up on the site Tuesday, are the two-volume Gutenberg bibles from each of the libraries and a beautiful 15th-century German bible, hand-colored and illustrated by woodcuts. ... The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 and is one of the most important research libraries in the world. The Bodleian is the largest university library in Britain."
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Re:In the name of "Allah" ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Library of Alexandria caught fire several times.
The first may have been when the Romans conquered Egypt. The Romans burned their own ships and much of the city caught fire, and the library may have been partially destroyed at this time.
A branch of the library may have been burned with the destruction of pagan temples when the Roman Empire outlawed paganism, but nobody knows how many (if any) books were lost. The main building was apparently not affected. And by the time paganism was made illegal in the Roman Empire, a concerted effort had been made to have copies of important documents in other libraries, including the worlds largest library at Constantinople. These other libraries were not burned (though it's entirely possible that some books in them were destroyed).
And it was finally destroyed by the Muslim army. There is a story that the Caliph ordered the burning of books stating that if they contradicted the Quran they are heretical, and if they did not then they are redundant. There are no contemporary sources for this story, so most historians doubt it. Whether or not this burning was deliberate, the destruction was complete and library was lost to history.
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The Library of Alexandria caught fire several times.
The first may have been when the Romans conquered Egypt. The Romans burned their own ships and much of the city caught fire, and the library may have been partially destroyed at this time.
A branch of the library may have been burned with the destruction of pagan temples when the Roman Empire outlawed paganism, but nobody knows how many (if any) books were lost. The main building was apparently not affected. And by the time paganism was made illegal in the Roman Empire, a concerted effort had been made to have copies of important documents in other libraries, including the worlds largest library at Constantinople. These other libraries were not burned (though it's entirely possible that some books in them were destroyed).
And it was finally destroyed by the Muslim army. There is a story that the Caliph ordered the burning of books stating that if they contradicted the Quran they are heretical, and if they did not then they are redundant. There are no contemporary sources for this story, so most historians doubt it. Whether or not this burning was deliberate, the destruction was complete and library was lost to history.
Now now now... why must you spoil a good atheist rant with more informed and level-headed information?
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Well, we lost the manual for the pyramids, anyway...
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User guide for a pyramid?
Pg.1 Lie down in your sarcophagus.
The End.
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Well, which rock was the one they left the keys to the ignition under, would be under Users guide.....
We could reverse engineer the rest.
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There are some reports that while it was finished in that last invasion, the library was already pretty much dead from budget cuts and infighting long before then. http://io9.com/the-great-library-at-alexandria-was-destroyed-by-budget-1442659066 [io9.com]
Sounds similar to some of the struggles in the US.
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Indeed it was the Romans who destroyed it first.
Here is an article I wrote years ago with references on really happened. The Arabs burning it may be a myth.
Who burned the Library of Alexandria [baheyeldin.com].
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Yes and the US kill off Indian tribes, Germans created the holocaust and many other nations destroy and plundered land and people. We learn our lessoned and stop doing it in the present day. The article is about what is happening now and what they're doing with the manuscripts. That is what is important now.
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The ancients liked to keep everything shiny too.
Ancient msnuscripts (Score:2)
Can we get Daniel Jackson to translate them?
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and here http://wesley.nnu.edu/sermons-essays-books/noncanonical-literature/ [nnu.edu]
and here http://www.toddtyszka.com/fulllist.html [toddtyszka.com]
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I think it's cool that there is a baseline that we can compare and see what changed, but i'd be more interested in books like Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture.
Comic Sans (Score:4, Funny)
And they're all available only in Comic Sans.
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And they're all available only in Comic Sans.
There is a project underway to convert the documents to Papyrus in order to make it look more olde-timey.
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what if I do not read "ancient"?
You can read the Greek ancient manuscripts -especially the New Testament, since it was originally written in the more simple "koini" (common) Greek form, the "lingua franca" of the time- if you can read... "modern" Greek!
Since i am a Greek i don't know for sure if you can read the Hebrew ancient manuscripts as easy as the Greek (i guess it is).
Appalling (Score:4, Funny)
Absolutely no respect for copyright. If I was a descendant of the families who wrote these documents, I would be demanding compensation!
Don't bother trying. (Score:3)
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Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
The images of the ancient texts are marked "Copyright Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana".
Copyright is seriously out of control. People don't even know what it is any more.
Re:Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the logic. The image is a work carrying copyright: you cannot reproduce the image without permission or staying within fair use/fair dealing provisions of relevant laws. The words on the pages in the are a public domain work: you can quote from the book with impunity. Logical in some minds, but copyright assertions by gatekeepers has a long history of abuse.
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The few images I have seen carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.
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If it is a straightforward photo that reproduces a 2D image such as a manuscript page that is in the public domain, then that photo is also in the public domain. I have uploaded others' photos on numerous occasions to Wikimedia Commons, which also recognizes such photos as public domain, and it has always been accepted as valid. Unfortunately many people, even museums, believe that anything and everything is under copyright, and they are un
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If it is a straightforward photo that reproduces a 2D image such as a manuscript page that is in the public domain, then that photo is also in the public domain.
**IN THE US**
Other countries disagree with the US Supreme Court's interpretation that simple mechanical effort is insufficient to introduce a new copyright claim. I don't know what copyright law in the Vatican or in the UK is with regards to that point, but neither the Vatican Library or the Bodleian Library is going to feel compelled to follow U.S. copyright law just because they posted something on the internet. (The Bridgeman v. Corel article you link actually talks about UK law, and how UK law is unclea
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Australian law, for example, does not require artistic merit (i.e. not a slavish copy) for a new copyright to exist in the photograph. An artistic work is defined as, "a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph, whether the work is of artistic quality or not." (Copyright Act 1968 Sect 10). Whether it is a slavish copy of a public domain work or not is irrelevant in determining the rights pertaining to the image of the object. Other provisions covering databases of works would also come into p
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Australian law, for example, does not require artistic merit (i.e. not a slavish copy) for a new copyright to exist in the photograph. An artistic work is defined as, "a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph, whether the work is of artistic quality or not."
That's shitty... UK law requires a little artistic merit. All other European law does too AFAIK. Most of the world holds that simple reproductions do not hold copyright in themselves.
Are telephone directories copyrighted in Australia?
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Phone books, yes, maybe, no, sometimes: Goodbye to copyright for databases? Federal Court finds no copyright in phone directories [claytonutz.com.au]. TV guides too: The High Court Decision in IceTV and Nine Network [bartier.com.au]. Both cases resolved against the purported copyright holder but not as a result of unambiguous law and not setting a clear precedent either. The copyright law in this country regarding compilations (there isn't database-specific law) is such an unmitigated morass that it takes thousands of dollars just to get
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The images of the ancient texts are marked "Copyright Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana".
Copyright is seriously out of control. People don't even know what it is any more.
Only the images (for the work of digitizing the manuscripts) - not the texts
That's correct. They own copyrights on the photos, but no one owns the texts.
Copyright is under control and works as it is supposed!
Hold your horses there, that doesn't necessarily follow. Just because there's nothing egregiously screwy in this case doesn't mean copyright isn't pretty badly broken. It is.
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It is very badly broken. The goal of proper copyright law is to increase the flow of material into the public domain. The social contract underlying it is basically "We'll all agree to arbitrarily limit what we can do for a short period of time in order to encourage the creation and publication of works". But in what twisted universe does it encourage creation and publication to restrict copying long after the creator has died? Do you seriously believe that authors, for example, might think "Well, if copy
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I completely disagree that it was "consumers" who first broke the contract. Oh, there were always small numbers of infringements, but copyright has become so one-sided that hardly any average people even understand what the social contract is. Given that it appears to most people to be a completely one-sided grant, with no significant harm caused by infringement, why not infringe? The content owners have done it to themselves. Reduce copyright to a reasonable duration (say, 10 years for most works) so t
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Consumers were never the problem copyright was intended to deal with - rival (especially larger, more competitive) publishers were. It's been warped into a law which punishes consumers, and is not helping small publishers as much.
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The images are _not_ copyrighted. They are representations, they are _not_ original works.
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Neat! (Score:2)
We can crowdsource all the Dan Brown clues-hidden-by-the-ancients malarky and discover thousands of Holy Grails, Atlantises, Lemurias, El Dorados, Alien Saucers etc.
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Oh, that's JUST great... (Score:1)
Two Paragraph spoiler summary [wikipedia.org] if you want the CliffNotes [cliffsnotes.com] version.
Quick translation results (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm, if I've got this correct, the item I just read says: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma."
Easier to find (Score:2)
Missing first page... (Score:1)
Does it have the missing first page from the bible that reads:
"Dedicated to my loving wife Sarah.
The stories contained herein are fictional, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
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Why would it have that? Your delusions seem interesting though.
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Well, i thought it was funny.
English Translation of Mahabharata is free! (Score:2)
The one and only line-by-line English translation of Mahabharata, by Ganguli, a three decade effort stretching from 1860 to 1890, is on the public domain and can be downloaded for free. Very difficult to read, extremely voluminous. But there things some mind boggling stuff there.
For example, while describing the reign of Emperor Dushyant, it says, "In his days
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Changes everything (Score:2)
I had no idea that ancient Hebrews had document scanners.
Missing Bible Page Found! (Score:3)
Not all the Bodlean, one hopes (Score:2)
I mean, there's one of the eight copies of that manuscript by Abdul Alhazrad there....
mark
Link to the Gutenberg Bible (Score:2)
The Gutenberg Bible can be viewed here [vatlib.it].
The beautiful colour woodcuts in Stamp.Ross.283 can be viewed here [vatlib.it].