"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 original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye..."
...any chance someone's pulling our leg?
A quick Google search didn't turn anything up on this, and I'd be a bit surprised if they had turned up so much significant stuff after only four days. After all, they *are* searching through a "rubbish heap." "Second Renaissance..." It all seems rather sensational...they've been imaging this collection for years...if they had a breakthrough of this magnitude wouldn't there be more of a stir?
