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.
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 skinny among those in the know is that, while perhaps not exactly "breaking" news, is nevertheless probably as significant as this article makes it sound. We'll continue to follow it.
Remote sensing update Research at South Abusir in 2001-2002 - methods and results
From an email sent by Miroslav Barta: We are happy to announce that the article
'Research at South Abusir in in 2001-2002 - methods and results'
which makes available the latest results of the Quickbird satellite imaging
(DigitalGlobeT) on the pyramid fields of Abusir, Saqqara and Dahshur has
been made available online. . .
Make sure to check out the interactive satellite images at:
-- http://egypt.geolab.cz/zoom/pan.htm (pyramid field of ABusir)
-- http://egypt.geolab.cz/zoom/qb.html (Abusir, Saqqara and Dahshur)
NAGPRA changes update Check out the 4th comment to this post on the proposed changes to NAGPRA, supplied by Ryan Seidemann whose article we cited.
More later.