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<BODY style="MARGIN: 4px 4px 1px; FONT: 10pt Microsoft Sans Serif">Some of you may have already heard this exciting news, but thought I'd post it for those who may not have. Thanks to Vancouver director, Richard Wolfe, who passed it along to me.<BR><BR>*************************************************************<BR><BR>From THE INDEPENDENT (UK)<BR><BR>Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may<BR>rewrite the history of the world<BR><BR>Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus<BR>scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants<BR>of Greece and Rome<BR><BR>By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke<BR><BR>17 April 2005<BR><BR>For more than a century, it has caused excitement and<BR>frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek<BR>and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of<BR>classical civilisation. If only it was legible.<BR><BR>Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical<BR>equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford<BR>University scientists have employed infra-red<BR>technology to open up the hoard, known as the<BR>Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that<BR>hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic<BR>poems will soon be revealed.<BR><BR>In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have<BR>used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries,<BR>including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and<BR>other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for<BR>millennia. They even believe they are likely to find<BR>lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were<BR>written around the time of the earliest books of the<BR>New Testament.<BR><BR>The original papyrus documents, discovered in an<BR>ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often<BR>meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and<BR>blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using<BR>the new photographic technique, developed from<BR>satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing<BR>back into view. Academics have hailed it as a<BR>development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase<BR>in the number of great Greek and Roman works in<BR>existence. Some are even predicting a "second<BR>Renaissance".<BR><BR>Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the<BR>University of Oxford, described the new works as<BR>"central texts which scholars have been speculating<BR>about for centuries".<BR><BR>Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar,<BR>formerly of University College London, now head of<BR>classics at the University of Michigan, said:<BR>"Normally we are lucky to get one such find per<BR>decade." One discovery in particular, a 30-line<BR>passage from the poet Archilocos, of whom only 500<BR>lines survive in total, is described as "invaluable"<BR>by Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the<BR>Friends of Classics campaign.<BR><BR>The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic<BR>dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus<BR>("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at<BR>the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000<BR>fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler<BR>Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical<BR>manuscripts in the world.<BR><BR>The previously unknown texts, read for the first time<BR>last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the<BR>Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek<BR>playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the<BR>2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by<BR>Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC<BR>Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet<BR>Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century<BR>successor of Homer, describing events leading up to<BR>the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod,<BR>Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await<BR>discovery.<BR><BR>Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red<BR>specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their<BR>operation is likely to increase the number of great<BR>literary works fully or partially surviving from the<BR>ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily<BR>double the surviving body of lesser work - the pulp<BR>fiction and sitcoms of the day.<BR><BR>"The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled<BR>importance - especially now that it can be read fully<BR>and relatively quickly," said the Oxford academic<BR>directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. "The material<BR>will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in<BR>Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the<BR>classical world as a whole."<BR><BR>The breakthrough has also caught the imagination of<BR>cultural commentators. Melvyn Bragg, author and<BR>presenter, said: "It's the most fantastic news. There<BR>are two things here. The first is how enormously<BR>influential the Greeks were in science and the arts.<BR>The second is how little of their writing we have. The<BR>prospect of having more to look at is wonderful."<BR><BR>Bettany Hughes, historian and broadcaster, who has<BR>presented TV series including Mysteries of the<BR>Ancients and The Spartans, said: "Egyptian rubbish<BR>dumps were gold mines. The classical corpus is like a<BR>jigsaw puzzle picked up at a jumble sale - many more<BR>pieces missing than are there. Scholars have always<BR>mourned the loss of works of genius - plays by<BR>Sophocles, Sappho's other poems, epics. These<BR>discoveries promise to change the textual map of the<BR>golden ages of Greece and Rome."<BR><BR>When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but<BR>sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic,<BR>Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material<BR>will probably add up to around five million words.<BR>Texts deciphered over the past few days will be<BR>published next month by the London-based Egypt<BR>Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and<BR>owns the collection.<BR><BR>A 21st-century technique reveals antiquity's secrets<BR><BR>Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the<BR>hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has<BR>fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000<BR>fragments, many containing text from the great writers<BR>of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been<BR>read so far. Many were illegible.<BR><BR>Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging<BR>techniques developed from satellite technology to read<BR>the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The<BR>fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond<BR>to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked<BR>eye can be seen and photographed.<BR><BR>The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to<BR>be reassembled. Missing "pieces" can be supplied from<BR>quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis.<BR><BR>Key words from the master of Greek tragedy<BR><BR>Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the<BR>flashing iron.<BR><BR>Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their<BR>purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of<BR>breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise<BR>shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep.<BR><BR>Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot's<BR>rail.<BR><BR>These words were written by the Greek dramatist<BR>Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of<BR>his lost play Epigonoi (literally "The Progeny"), the<BR>story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week's<BR>hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford<BR>University, no one knew of their existence, and this<BR>is the first time they have been published.<BR><BR>Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age<BR>of Greek civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside<BR>and competed with Aeschylus, Euripides and<BR>Aristophanes.<BR><BR>His best-known work is Oedipus Rex, the play that<BR>later gave its name to the Freudian theory, in which<BR>the hero kills his father and marries his mother - in<BR>a doomed attempt to escape the curse he brings upon<BR>himself. His other masterpieces include Antigone and<BR>Electra.<BR><BR>Sophocles was the cultured son of a wealthy Greek<BR>merchant, living at the height of the Greek empire. An<BR>accomplished actor, he performed in many of his own<BR>plays. He also served as a priest and sat on the<BR>committee that administered Athens. A great dramatic<BR>innovator, he wrote more than 120 plays, but only<BR>seven survive in full.<BR><BR>Last week's remarkable finds also include work by<BR>Euripides, Hesiod and Lucian, plus a large and<BR>particularly significant paragraph of text from the<BR>Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th<BR>century BC.<BR><BR><BR><BR></BODY></HTML>