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Crowdsourcing Ancient Egyptian Scrolls
An anonymous reader writes "Dons at Oxford University were on the BBC Radio 4 'Today' program this morning asking for help from listeners to transcribe unearthed ancient Egyptian texts and scrolls via their website. Visitors to the site are asked to match-up letters on scanned fragments of papyrus with an on-screen Greek alphabet. By doing so, they can help reveal some of the amazing documents that the ancient Egyptians last read. You too can become a papyrologist!"
Greek? You expect me to help translate Ptolemaic period shit?!?!? Do I *look* like Alexander the Fucking Great to you?
You want my help, you better throw down some hieroglyphs, bitch!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No thanks. I hear those Egyptian curses are nasty, and are acquired by simply reading something or breaking a seal.
I think this is a great idea, although they would need some peer review and a full board to accept the translations as being the most accurate....but a great way to save money, that's for sure
just think if they setup a website similar to the jigsaw puzzle website jigzone that let anyone download a bunch of fragments and assemble them, and when they find two or more pieces that fit then that info in anonymously uploaded for further inspection and with the millions of internet users having access they might be able to complete this daunting task fairly soon
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's actually pretty fun. I already transcribed one piece. It's running a bit slow though. When they said "crowd sourcing", I don't think they meant "slashdot crowd sourcing".
You're trying to be silly, but that kind of information would be useful:
- If I have a bunch of people's shopping lists, I'd be able to tell what sort of things were commonly eaten in that society.
- Based on how many other people had those foods on the list, I'd likely be able to get an idea as to what's considered rare delicacies versus what's common food (e.g. caviar versus ground beef).
- Especially combining that information with where the document was found, I'd have a good chance of linking menus to social classes.
- Once I've got an idea of which social classes have these documents and which don't, I'd know how widespread literacy was in that society, whether there were only professional scribes or amateur writers as well, and maybe some sense of how integrated the scribes were with the rest of the society.
I mean, imagine you're an archaeologist from the year 3000 trying to figure out why this "pizza" stuff was so wildly popular in ancient New York. Suddenly the nutritional information on the back of a pepperoni wrapper is vitally important.
I am officially gone from
As a late antique historian, I have to point out (to defend our territory, and, at the same time, avoid offending historians of an earlier period) that these are not "ancient Egyptian" in the sense most people mean. These are very late antique. I am glad to see a project like this, however. It's because of mundane papyrus stashes like these that we know more about daily life in Egypt, and Alexandria in particular, than any other area in late antiquity. For those who might be interested in the subject, I recommend R. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993), C. Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity (1997), and the recent Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-700, edited by Bagnall (2007), as some great places to start.
Couldn't they just look it up on Wikipapyrus?
There's your problem. These symbols that you're translating as "Door of Heaven" should be something more like "Star Gate".
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I heard about this on RadioLab awhile ago - a trash dump full of fragments of old scrolls. I believe it was the "Detective Stories" episode: http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/10/
They were saying it would take centuries to match up all of the pieces, because they only had a few people working on it, and so many scraps to go through. My immediate thought was that they should scan them all and put them on the Internet, and some bored 17 year old would write a program in Scala that would run in the cloud and match everything up in a weekend. Sounds like somebody else had the same idea ...
I started doing one, but couldn't finish. I got as far as 3.1415926535897 93238462643383 27950288419716 93993751058209 74944592307816 40628620899862 80348253421170 but then I got bored. Meaningless gibberish. I did sneak a peek at the last page though. Turns out the last digit is 8.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think this kind of shit gives me hope that the internet isn't just for porn and poker anymore. What a great and smart way to exponentially increase the resources of the project. Stuff like this, and folding@home, and other crowd-sourced projects are an amazing phenomenon. Whoever is in charge knows how to sell it too, with the whole "read it while you translate it" concept, which kind of turns the whole thing into a video game. Nice work by the Oxford folk.
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
That information failed to meet the notability guidelines and was deleted per the official deletion policy. Backups from that time period were written over a short time later under the assumption that the information would no longer be needed. Later attempts to put the information back were prevented due to the no original research policy and an ill-informed admin with a grudge who wouldn't allow the information, citing the sources being used were unreliable and could not be verified.
I mean, imagine you're an archaeologist from the year 3000 trying to figure out why this "pizza" stuff was so wildly popular in ancient New York. Suddenly the nutritional information on the back of a pepperoni wrapper is vitally important.
Sodium! They alowed sodium in food products! Barbarians!
Peparonni? Meat! Theay actually consumed living animals! Bloody Mindless Christians!
Cheese? Milk! Why don't they just smear dog crap on it?
They should have eaten what I had for lunch. Palmerized pseudo lichen, just like Mother used to make.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
You're trying to be silly, but that kind of information would be useful: - If I have a bunch of people's shopping lists, I'd be able to tell what sort of things were commonly eaten in that society. - Based on how many other people had those foods on the list, I'd likely be able to get an idea as to what's considered rare delicacies versus what's common food (e.g. caviar versus ground beef). - Especially combining that information with where the document was found, I'd have a good chance of linking menus to social classes. - Once I've got an idea of which social classes have these documents and which don't, I'd know how widespread literacy was in that society, whether there were only professional scribes or amateur writers as well, and maybe some sense of how integrated the scribes were with the rest of the society.
I mean, imagine you're an archaeologist from the year 3000 trying to figure out why this "pizza" stuff was so wildly popular in ancient New York. Suddenly the nutritional information on the back of a pepperoni wrapper is vitally important.
the text you are looking for is " A canticle for Leibowitz", by Walter Miller. I distinctly remember that in the story there's a little note attributed to Leibowitz himself, that reads:"Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma."
upon this, and other finds, a civilisation is reborn after a nuclear war.
Couriously enough, I read the book because it was quoted in the novel "Space", by James Michener, when one of the main characters wants to leave a legacy of love for science. Remeber, this is Slashdot!
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