An interesting classical link

[vaznetti]

Reading lost classical texts

Very interesting -- apparently, one can use infra-red light or some such to read previously illegible fragments of papyri. At the moment the focus seems to be on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection at Oxford (you can read about the collection here) but presumably other universities will start doing the same.

At one point in my academic career, I was doing about as much work with papyri as someone who doesn't officially work with papyri and isn't a paleographer can. Now that I'm a Latinist, this won't impact me quite so directly, but like all the other classicists, I'm foaming at the mouth to see what they find next and digging up my old notes of "top ten works I wish we had." More Aeschylus, please! More lyric! Both of these are near-certainties, of course, so I will spare a thought for the prose works. The problem, of course, is one of length and genre -- 30 lines of Archilochus is quite a lot, but the same amount of Polybius or Xenophon isn't quite so useful, unless one is very lucky.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Oxford link! Isn't all this exciting?

*bouncebouncebounce*

[fillyjonk.livejournal.com]

How extraordinary! Is it really going to change everything? How much lost text is there that can be 'found' this way? I'm all for a second Renaissance, myself!

[vaznetti]

I suspect that the Independant puffed things up a bit. We'll have a bit more tragedy and poetry, but I'd be surprised if we got any whole works, or more than a fraction of any whole work. I could be mistaken, though.

This will be invaluable to the people who work on Greek drama and poetry, and to those who work on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt; I'm not sure how much things will change for the rest of us.

[darcydodo]

I'd say the Independant totally puffed things up. I mean, looking at that Archilochus fragment, I can't imagine how infrared helped them any more than just their standard moderately high-powered microscope would. But I'm going to try and go to Obbink's lecture on Wednesday, so maybe he'll make things clearer there.

[vaznetti]

I'd be interested to hear what Obbink has to say; I'm trying to remember who I know at CSAD, these days, so that I can ask about this when I get back to Oxford.

[darcydodo]

They're not actually using infrared, it turns out. The Independent, as we surmised, was a rather undetailed and somewhat misleading explanation. What they're doing is using tons of filters, and in a lot of cases, they get the best results if they filter out all but the infrared spectrum. In other cases, it works best in ultraviolet. And so on.

In terms of what they can see, well, on the Archilochus it helps a bit -- you get a very stark view of the letters, and sometimes bits come more legible, and very occasionally, broken letters are actually joined up. Where it's of the most advantage, though, is in cases where the papyrus is actually illegible, not because of missing ink, but because of things like stains, or burning... or even plaster and paint. So that's the exciting bit. No more dissolving cartouche. :)

[fillyjonk.livejournal.com]

ah, yes, I thought they were making it rather more dramatic than it probably was. Ah, well. Still, I guess it is fantastic for those in the field

[trixalicious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing that! I read it to the husband and we're both kind of geeking out over it all.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Thanks for the link to the article, and to the ancient works. It would be truly amazing if the result was as grand as the article suggests it might be.

And he is gluing together the chariot's rail.

[malograntum.livejournal.com]

*swoon*

It said there might be more Euripides coming, too. And I know we've already got more Euripides than Sophocles or Aeschylus, but.

Oh.

Heavens.