The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
This is cool beyond words...
In 1896, two archaeologists, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt were digging at an ancient rubbish dump in Egypt and (from Grenfell):
"The rubbish mounds were nothing but rubbish mounds." But they very soon realized what they had found. The unique combination of climate and circumstance had left at Oxyrhynchus an unequaled archive of the ancient world. "The flow of papyri soon became a torrent," Grenfell recalled. "Merely turning up the soil with one's boot would frequently disclose a layer."
Being classically educated Englishmen, Grenfell and Hunt were mainly interested in the possibility that Oxyrhynchus might reveal the lost masterpieces of classical Greek literature: the lost plays, histories and philosophical works of ancient Athens. They knew that the Constitution of Athens by Aristotle had been discovered on Egyptian papyrus in 1890. This hope inspired them and their successors to sift through the mountains of rubbish at Oxyrhynchus for the next century. Unfortunately, Oxyrhynchus was a fairly ordinary provincial town, not a center of learning, and most of its citizens had little interest in literature or philosophy. Besides, copies of the classics were rare and expensive in ancient times, and not likely to find their way to the rubbish dump. This means that literary finds were few, and most of them were copies of the well-known standard works, such as Homer, on which Hellenistic education was based.
Of the many thousands of papyri excavated from Oxyrhynchus, only about ten percent was literary. The rest consisted of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes and private letters. Nevertheless, Grenfell and Hunt found enough to keep them going in the hope of finding more. In their first year of digging, they found parts of several lost plays of Sophocles, such as the Ichneutae and many other books and fragments, including parts of what appeared to be an unknown Christian gospel. These discoveries captured the public imagination, and Grenfell and Hunt sent articles and photos to newspapers in Britain, arguing the importance of their work and seeking donations to keep it going.
Grenfell and Hunt devoted the rest of their lives to the diggings at Oxyrhynchus, apart from the years of World War I. Every winter, when the Egyptian climate was bearable, Grenfell and Hunt supervised hundreds of Egyptian workers, excavating the rubbish mounds, digging up tightly packed layers of papyrus mixed with earth. The finds were sifted, partly cleaned and then shipped to Grenfell and Hunt's base at Oxford. During the summer Grenfell and Hunt cleaned, sorted, translated and compared the year's haul, assembling complete texts from dozens of fragments and extracts. In 1898 they published the first volume of their finds. They worked closely together, each revising what the other wrote, and publishing the result jointly. In 1920, however, Grenfell died, leaving Hunt to continue with other collaborators until his own death in 1934.
The above was excerpted from the
Wikipedia entry for Oxyrhynchus
Unfortunately, the majority of these papers were unreadable. Ink fades. Fortunately, Science advances and new technologies are developed all the time. One of which is an infrared imaging technology first developed for use on satellites and it has made the blind men see.
Here is an article from
The Independent:
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
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 civilization. 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".
All I can say is WOW! Jen's comment was "Alexandria?"
Not only the literary works but all the tax records, public and private documents, correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, court-records, wills. An awesome look back into our history...
Posted by DaveH at April 17, 2005 9:58 PM