[B-Greek] Oxyrhynchus Papyri breakthrough
Eric Weiss
papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 17 00:01:24 EDT 2005
Read whole article here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630165
Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world
Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary
giants of Greece and Rome
By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke
17 April 2005
For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a
collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation.
If only it was legible.
Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford
University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies
and epic poems will soon be revealed.
In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing
discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the
ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels,
the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.
<snip>
When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac,
Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around
five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the
London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the
collection.
Eric S. Weiss
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