Digitizing Literary Treasures Leads To New Finds

storagedude writes "The WSJ has a cool article on how the race to digitize literary treasures has led to a trove of new discoveries. Quoting: 'Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable — blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians ... By taking high-resolution digital images in 14 different light wavelengths, ranging from infrared to ultraviolet, Oxford scholars are reading bits of papyrus that were discovered in 1898 in an ancient garbage dump in central Egypt. So far, researchers have digitized about 80% of the collection of 500,000 fragments, dating from the 2nd century B.C. to the 8th century A.D. The texts include fragments of unknown works by famous authors of antiquity, lost gospels and early Islamic manuscripts.'"

Comments

Better not show those "Lost gospels" to the church

[jonwil]

Don't want the church to try and bury anything that discredits the bible the way they did to the discoveries of Jean-Francois Champollion in Egypt in the 1820s

You are kidding, right?

[mcrbids]

Have you ever tried to argue with a fundamentalist?

Anything that disagrees with their point of view is wrong. That is all. Seriously.

And if you think that evidence that Jesus was really a pedophile would really make a difference, you are wrong. They don't care, but the fact that you bring it up is reason for them to hate you.

Fundamentalists are proof to the world that Satan does, in fact, exists.