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April 17, 2005
First Time Reading
The reading exams for ancient philosophers just got a whole lot harder. Scientists at Oxford have used infrared to make the documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri - 400 000 fragments of Greek and Roman writings - legible.
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.
Via languagehat, who links to Martin Robertson's translation of a fragment of a poem by Arkhilokhos (I particularly recommend that link.) That fragment was discovered just 30 years ago and the new haul promises more from the same writer.
Just one more reason why it would have been worse to be born 100 years earlier...
Posted by logican at April 17, 2005 12:23 PM
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