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Topic: RE: virus:"... lost Christian gospels"? (Read 639 times) |
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Blunderov
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RE: virus:"... lost Christian gospels"?
« on: 2005-04-18 03:09:54 » |
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[Blunderov] It remains to be seen whether the same academic
empire-building (and worse!)that attended the Qumram papyri will be
repeated. So far this does not seem to be the case. These documents are
owned by "the London-based Egypt Exploration Society" so, apparently,
the materials have not yet been hijacked by the Vatican.
Best Regards.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=6
30165
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.
The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in
central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed,
worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using
the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are
bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it
as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the
number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even
predicting a "second Renaissance".
Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of
Oxford, described the new works as "central texts which scholars have
been speculating about for centuries".
Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar, formerly of
University College London, now head of classics at the University of
Michigan, said: "Normally we are lucky to get one such find per decade."
One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the poet Archilocos,
of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as "invaluable" by
Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics
campaign.
The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the
Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in
central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000
fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the
biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world.
The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include
parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the
5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the
2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides;
mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by
the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a
7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the
Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles
almost certainly await discovery.
Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from
Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase
the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the
ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the
surviving body of lesser work - the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day.
"The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially
now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly," said the Oxford
academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. "The material will shed
light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,
and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole."
The breakthrough has also caught the imagination of cultural
commentators. Melvyn Bragg, author and presenter, said: "It's the most
fantastic news. There are two things here. The first is how enormously
influential the Greeks were in science and the arts. The second is how
little of their writing we have. The prospect of having more to look at
is wonderful."
Bettany Hughes, historian and broadcaster, who has presented TV series
including Mysteries of the Ancients and The Spartans, said: "Egyptian
rubbish dumps were gold mines. The classical corpus is like a jigsaw
puzzle picked up at a jumble sale - many more pieces missing than are
there. Scholars have always mourned the loss of works of genius - plays
by Sophocles, Sappho's other poems, epics. These discoveries promise to
change the textual map of the golden ages of Greece and Rome."
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.
A 21st-century technique reveals antiquity's secrets
Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents
known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There
are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of
antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were
illegible.
Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed
from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's
Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass,
respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can
be seen and photographed.
The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to be reassembled.
Missing "pieces" can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and
grammatical analysis.
Key words from the master of Greek tragedy
Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron.
Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for
the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise
shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep.
Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot's rail.
These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the
only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally "The
Progeny"), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week's hi-tech
analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their
existence, and this is the first time they have been published.
Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age of Greek
civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside and competed with
Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
His best-known work is Oedipus Rex, the play that later gave its name to
the Freudian theory, in which the hero kills his father and marries his
mother - in a doomed attempt to escape the curse he brings upon himself.
His other masterpieces include Antigone and Electra.
Sophocles was the cultured son of a wealthy Greek merchant, living at
the height of the Greek empire. An accomplished actor, he performed in
many of his own plays. He also served as a priest and sat on the
committee that administered Athens. A great dramatic innovator, he wrote
more than 120 plays, but only seven survive in full.
Last week's remarkable finds also include work by Euripides, Hesiod and
Lucian, plus a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from
the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC.
---
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rhinoceros
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RE: virus:"... lost Christian gospels"?
« Reply #1 on: 2005-04-18 12:13:02 » |
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[Blunderov]
It remains to be seen whether the same academic empire-building (and worse!)that attended the Qumram papyri will be repeated. So far this does not seem to be the case. These documents are owned by "the London-based Egypt Exploration Society" so, apparently, the materials have not yet been hijacked by the Vatican.
Best Regards.
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
<snip>
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.
The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view.
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
I do share the excitement for these findings and I wonder where this feeling comes from. Besides a better knowledge of the past, we probably get a better understanding of our "human nature" when we read a tragedy of Sophocles and notice some patterns which persist after millenia.
See, for example, how contemporary Aristophanes' "Acharneans" seems:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/acharnians.html
By the way, something funny I realised is that the Greek word "Epigonoi" translates to "Progeny" in English. In Greek, "pro-" means before. "Progonoi" = ancestors and "Epigonoi" = dscendants.
Of the three ancient Greek tragedy writers, Sophocles was mostly writing about personal human aspirations and the ironies of human fate, Euripides was writing on social themes such as justice and democracy, and Aeschylus was writing about heroic deeds and achievements and the gods.
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Blunderov
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Gender:
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus:"... lost Christian gospels"?
« Reply #2 on: 2005-05-23 14:31:07 » |
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[Blunderov] More ancient texts recovered by hi-tech means. And it's a
biggy...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67605,00.html
"Accelerator Deciphers Archimedes
BALTIMORE -- A particle accelerator is revealing parts of the long-lost
writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for
centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it during the Middle Ages.
Highly focused X-rays produced at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
were used last week to begin deciphering sections of the 174-page text
that have not yet been revealed. The X-rays cause iron in the hidden ink
to glow.
"One of the delightful things is we don't know what it's going to say,"
said William Noel, head of the Archimedes Palimpsest project at the
Walters Art Gallery.
Scholars believe the treatise was copied by a scribe in the 10th century
from Archimedes' original Greek scrolls, written in the third century
B.C. It was erased about 200 years later by a monk who reused the
parchment for a prayer book, creating a twice-used parchment book known
as a "palimpsest." In the 12th century, parchment -- scraped and dried
animal skins -- was rare and costly, and Archimedes' works were in less
demand.
The palimpsest was bought at auction for $2 million in 1998 by an
anonymous private collector who loaned it to the Baltimore museum and
funded studies to reveal the text. About 80 percent of the text has been
uncovered so far.
"It's the only one that contains diagrams that may bear any resemblance
to the diagrams Archimedes himself drew in the sand in Syracuse 2000
years ago," Noel said.
While reading an article on the text, Stanford physicist Uwe Bergmann
realized he could use a particle accelerator to detect small amounts of
iron in the ink. The electrons speeding along the circular accelerator
emit X-rays that can be used to cause the iron to fluoresce, or glow.
"Anything which contains iron will be shown, and anything that doesn't
contain iron will not be shown," Bergmann said.
Bergmann normally uses the accelerator, in which electrons are pushed to
near the speed of light, to study the structure of water and how water
is split to create oxygen during photosynthesis.
Most of the text has been revealed by scientists at Johns Hopkins
University and the Rochester Institute of Technology who used digital
cameras and processing techniques as well as ultraviolet and infrared
filters developed for medicine and space research.
The so-called Archimedes Palimpsest includes the only copy of the
treatise "Method of Mechanical Theorems," in which Archimedes explains
how he used mechanical means to develop his mathematical theorems. It is
also the only source in the original Greek for the treatise "On Floating
Bodies," in which Archimedes deals with the physics of flotation and
gravity.
Three of the undeciphered pages were imaged last week, and the rest are
expected to take three to four years to complete, Noel said."
---
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