Second Renaissance, Second Look

Through Arts and Letters Daily and Martin Lindeskog, I recently learned of a fascinating story concerning the use of advanced imaging techniques to salvage fragments of classical texts literally from the garbage heaps of history. Reports culled by Lindeskog ranged from the wildly optimistic (The headline gives a good indication of what this article was like. More is excerpted in the next link.) to the acidly skeptical.

So as of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up or disavow the sensational claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent's reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they're trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news.

Today's New York Sun offers a better-balanced and more sober article.

In a message to the online listserv for papyrologists, Mr. Obbink indicated that, though the team has made new discoveries, the Oxyrhynchus researchers - like most scholars - "do not normally announce our findings in advance of publication." He also wrote that the Independent article was "reported enthusiastically, if selectively."

Specifically, the article should not have implied that all the papyri had just been discovered, "only that we made significant (and sufficiently exciting) advances in reading and confirmation of identifications with some." He went on to say that while some pieces were identified for the first time, many others "remain complete mysteries."

For as much as "discovery" may be what the wider world thinks of as news, the work of scholars like Mr. Obbink consists of more laborious but necessary tasks of transcribing, analyzing, confirming, and reconfirming. "Their work is the result of many, many intensive years of hard study of the papyrus texts," said Cornell University classics professor Jeffrey Rusten....

And what of those 400,000 Oxyrhynchus fragments? As you might guess from the above, it's gonna be slow goin'.

Now filling two rooms at the Sackler Library and a small warehouse outside of Oxford, the collection is thought to contain more than 400,000 fragments. In the course of a century, using available technology or none at all, researchers have managed to publish about 5,000 of those fragments. They have sought out new technology to help them get at the vast number of previously inscrutable or entirely obscured manuscripts. Mr. Obbink speculates that they might be finished publishing the important fragments in perhaps two generations.

Knowing how arduous scientific work is, and fondly remembering my studies of Latin in high school and college, I still find this marriage of classical scholarship and modern technology exciting. But I somehow doubt this story will be made into a Lara Kroft movie!

-- CAV