Comments on: If Euripedes papyri, so help me...

If Euripedes papyri, so help me...

Kattullus — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:10:40 -0800

Oxford University has just announced that they and Brigham Young University have developed a technology to read the previously illegible papyri of Oxyrhynchus collection. More info here and here.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:25:19 -0800

That is too cool. Forget DVD backup, I'm burying my documents in the desert. Can't wait to read some new Classics.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:37:37 -0800

I'm particularly excited about the extended fragment of Archilochus, one of my favorite poets. When are we going to get to see the actual texts? Ah, they say "next month." *waits*

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:42:37 -0800

And not before time. But let us not forget the work being done on Herculaneum. Also here, here, here.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 14:57:18 -0800

In some cases clear, legible writings have been found on fragments that researchers believed were completely blank. Very exciting, thanks for this.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:11:52 -0800

this is pretty fucking exciting. I was reading about it at slashdot, and somehow missed that Brigham Young was involved.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:34:12 -0800

Wow. This is incredible. Hopefully, these'll all be translated and put up on the web? A boy can dream...

By: cali

cali — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:08:08 -0800

[this is good]

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:16:49 -0800

Of related interest: Archimedes Palimpsest, where multispectral techniques recovered details of Archimedes' calculus-like Method of Mechanical Theorems.

By: stray

stray — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 21:27:03 -0800

"Oh, Septimus!--can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides .... How can we sleep for grief?" This'll help my insomnia! Thanks for the link.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 21:53:15 -0800

C'mon, somebody find the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:12:39 -0800

I. "If you have to explain a joke, it's not funny." II. "If I cut my finger on a piece of paper, that's tragedy. If you fall into an open manhole and die, that's comedy." I'm sure there are more. But seriously folks, this is pretty exciting stuff.

By: QuietDesperation

QuietDesperation — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:25:22 -0800

There is an irresistible irony in the participation of Brigham Young University, in that Joseph Smith perpetrated fraudulent translations of the Bible and his so-called Book of Abraham.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:06:29 -0800

If you want to know more, there's a series of Radio Four programmes about oxyrhynchos.

By: ciderwoman

ciderwoman — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 04:08:30 -0800

From the Oxyrhynchus list of papers 1266 Examination for Membership of the Gymnasium 98 Here's betting it's a piece wondering why they spent all that money joining the gym and only went twice.

By: Jon-o

Jon-o — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:39:16 -0800

Let's hope it's not all just financial records. In 3,000 years, someone's going to be digging through our trash heaps and wondering why the feces of our infants was so precious that we encased it all in permanent plastic bundles. What'll confuse them even more is all the copies of The Davinci Code they'll find....

By: ericb

ericb — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 08:50:20 -0800

In 3,000 years, someone's going to be digging through our trash heaps and wondering ... Brings to mind Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz".

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:48:34 -0800

This is indeed exciting. Oh, and, languagehat, a few weeks ago we got a significant new Archilochus text from Oxyrhynchus: image and translation, Java applet to display partial preliminary reconstructed edition. It will be interesting to see how much we get, how quickly, and in how usable a form, in the case of the texts read by this new technique.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:52:57 -0800

Also, Scotsman article (nothing really new here).

By: gigawhat?

gigawhat? — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:43:34 -0800

Of course, it's quite possible Greece's literary reputation will suffer as a result, especially if the recovered texts turn out to be the ancient equivalents of The Purpose-Driven Life, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and Chicken Soup for the _____ Soul.

By: kanewai

kanewai — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:45:19 -0800

Languagehat: Oxyrhynchus Online has a few fragments online, and many links that I haven't explored yet. There's not much poetry, but there is an interesting fragment from Revelations placing the number of the Beast at 616, and not 666 as later texts claim. I don't know why, but I find this terribly amusing.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:08:04 -0800

Slate has a little piece on the technology.

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:45:50 -0800

The "classical holy grail" or unholy hype? "Some of the papyrologists on the "PAPY list," the listserv where many papyrologists from around the world make announcements, ask questions, etc., were openly derisive of the article [published in the Independent on April 17, 2005]....So as of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up or disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent's reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they're trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news."

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:46:51 -0800

A thing of beauty is (now) a joy forever "My new heroes are the Brigham Young researchers whose scanners have unveiled ancient fragments of Sophocles, Euripides and the earliest Gospels." [Salon | April 19, 2005 - requires free registration for day pass]

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:40:02 -0800

Thanks for the hype link, ericb. I just came to post it myself. See also the discussion. It's true that the basic technology has been around for a while, and it's proving quite hard to get a trustworthy fix on what exactly, if anything, is new or worth all these hopes.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:58:14 -0800

Cautious optimism from a papyrology email list: Ariel Loftus: I too went to a presentation a few weeks ago by Roger McFarlane from BYU where the results of multi-spectral imaging were very dramatic. Roger showed a Greek papryus that had been previously published as Latin, but could be read in its entirety as Greek with some Latin words. He suggested that the technology could also be used on unrolled scrolls because it can be used to read through layers - the technology has been developed for industrial uses, whereas previous imaging techniques were from the medical field, apparently this makes all the difference. My impression was that the BYU team is interested in having people try the technology. Jeff Fish: The team from BYU photographed the Herculaneum papyri a few years ago, and most of us didn't think the results would amount to much, since various techniques had already been tried on the papyri, including photography in the infrared range. We were amazed by the success of the project, which seems to have been brought about by a combination of expertise and state of the art equipment. In places we could read long stretches of text we didn't know were on the papyrus at all. Whatever lies behind the article in the Independent, if the BYU team are getting similar results with the with the Oxyrhynchus texts, we have much to look forward to indeed.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:47:33 -0800

Finally, the scoop from on high