Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Mr. Jaw, meet Mr. Floor

Speaking of the Modulator, he links a pretty staggering news item:

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 civilisation. 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.


We're talking about lost writings by men named Sophocles, Hesiod, Euripides...and maybe some lost Christian Gospels. Now that ought to be interesting stuff.

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