Oxford Hits a Homer
How exciting is this? Technology has finally caught up with the "Oxyrhynchus papyri," a wad of old paper plucked years ago from an ancient Egyptian trash dump. Everybody knew it was chock full of classical literature -- most of which has been lost since the Dark Ages. But it was too beat up to read. Until now. Oxford University researchers used infrared technology to reveal it.
Wait a minute, though. "[P]ast four days ... read for the first time last week .... That's a journalistic time-frame. Scholarly work doesn't happen that fast. A ruined text doesn't jump back to life in recognizable form. Experts will spend months trying to decide whether they're looking at a theta or a psi.
The Nag Hammadi Library of early Christian gnostic scriptures was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. The translation wasn't completed until the 1970s. Even Anglo-Saxon texts, which are more recent and more familiar, require scrupulous close reading before they can be understood.
Even worse, these Oxyrhynchus things are in pieces, like a middle school love note that's been torn into confetti. First the professors have to fit them all together.
And then scholars will have to decide if the poems are genuinely works of those classical geniuses, or mere Hellenistic imitations.
So how come they're already so sure of what they've got?
Well, Classical Values, which has the academic pedigree, suggests a possible angle.
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 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 ....
Wait a minute, though. "[P]ast four days ... read for the first time last week .... That's a journalistic time-frame. Scholarly work doesn't happen that fast. A ruined text doesn't jump back to life in recognizable form. Experts will spend months trying to decide whether they're looking at a theta or a psi.
The Nag Hammadi Library of early Christian gnostic scriptures was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. The translation wasn't completed until the 1970s. Even Anglo-Saxon texts, which are more recent and more familiar, require scrupulous close reading before they can be understood.
Even worse, these Oxyrhynchus things are in pieces, like a middle school love note that's been torn into confetti. First the professors have to fit them all together.
And then scholars will have to decide if the poems are genuinely works of those classical geniuses, or mere Hellenistic imitations.
So how come they're already so sure of what they've got?
Well, Classical Values, which has the academic pedigree, suggests a possible angle.
But frankly I question the timing. This is a great boon to an Oxford classics program that is currently in a bit of turmoil, suffering criticism of lagging standards and finding itself in a quandary over funding.
Oxyrhynchus to the rescue!
