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June 01, 2005
Oxyrhynchus Update
The Washington Post had a good survey on the work to read the many Oxyrhynchus Papyri fragments and the papyri from the ancient Roman site of Herculaneum.
An interesting note that is new, at least to me, is the possibility of Aramaic, Hebrew and Syriac texts from Oxyrhynchus.
Obbink [director of the recovery efforts] and his colleagues have found a variety of languages and scripts in the fragments. Besides Greek and Latin, they include Hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs), Demotic (hieroglyphic shorthand), Coptic (Egyptian with the Greek alphabet), Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Old Nubian, Syriac and, in the later deposits, Arabic.
As Jim Davila says, this "is especially interesting to someone who works on the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, which often were written in or now survive translated into most of these same languages."
The New York Times also has a recent article on the Oxyrhynchus discoveries that is worth a read. It points out some of the "excesses" of the Independent article. I think I only pasted along one of them in my previous post. Perhaps the words, "The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, . . ." from the article, are a bit of an exaggeration. Some of these texts have been know for several years.
Via PaleoJudaica
Posted by DuaneSmith at June 1, 2005 02:33 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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