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This is an extraordinary news. History surrounding those scrolls (after unearthed) is as interesting, if not more, than what probably lies in the scrolls themse
by Keyframe 11y ago
This is an extraordinary news. History surrounding those scrolls (after unearthed) is as interesting, if not more, than what probably lies in the scrolls themselves.
- ryan_j_naughton 11y agoThe history surrounding the scrolls is undoubtedly interesting, but I would argue it is much less interesting or valuable than the content of the scrolls themselves. The reason is that the volume of text from the ancient Greco-Roman world was orders of magnitude larger than the surviving texts. To put it in perspective, the library of Alexandria likely had 500K scrolls [1]. In contrast, the Loeb Classical Library from Harvard (which is generally considered one of the most complete collections of surviving texts) "can all fit in a bookcase or two"[2]. Given that the Loeb texts contain both the original and translations, the volume of surviving texts would fit in even less space if it was only in the original Greek or Latin. Thus, we can surmise that we have less than 1/2 of 1% of all the works from the Library of Alexandria. Therefore, there is a very good chance that some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum library will be new texts. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria [2] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031
- Keyframe 11y agoOf course that possible new discovery would be more interesting, what are the chances though? Since I'm in film/animation backgorund I am rooting for a possible recovery of a lost Sophocles play :) From what I remember (it's been awhile), wasn't the villa that scrolls were found in not completely unearthed - with a possibility of more scrolls inside? I think, from what I remember, that these 1800 or so were found in a crate (in a part of said villa) people were trying to rescue while Vesuvius was doing its thing, leaving the possibility of more crates or even a full library still buried. Getty, I think, build a replica of that villa in Malibu.