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1.5 Million Pages of Ancient Manuscripts Online
New submitter LordWabbit2 sends this quote from an AP report:
"The Vatican Library and Oxford University's Bodleian Library have put the first of 1.5 million pages of ancient manuscripts online. The two libraries in 2012 announced a four-year project to digitize some of the most important works of their collections of Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts and early printed books. Among the first up on the site Tuesday, are the two-volume Gutenberg bibles from each of the libraries and a beautiful 15th-century German bible, hand-colored and illustrated by woodcuts. ... The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 and is one of the most important research libraries in the world. The Bodleian is the largest university library in Britain."
Why polish back then?
Can we get Daniel Jackson to translate them?
This is a pretty awesome project. I took a look at the German bible and nerdgasmed a bit upon seeing the umlauts in original form. ^_^
And they're all available only in Comic Sans.
what if I do not read "ancient"?
Absolutely no respect for copyright. If I was a descendant of the families who wrote these documents, I would be demanding compensation!
No amount of Slashdottery will take the awesome out of this.
The images of the ancient texts are marked "Copyright Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana".
Copyright is seriously out of control. People don't even know what it is any more.
...
Of course most of the Vatican Hebrew docs are surely either plundered from European Jews or possibly though not likely survive the Roman plunder of the Jewish temple and and ethnic cleansing of the previous state of Israel. This area was renamed Syria Palestina or Palestine to take the Jewish name from the land creating the eternal (until the 40's) European Jewish refugee problem in the first place.
Nice to see them sharing online while retaining possession, not unlike how they retain possession to this day of synagogues in Spain and Portugal that were confiscated and turned into churches by holy mandate.
Parts of the collection at Alexandria were destroyed by "Christians."
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
We can crowdsource all the Dan Brown clues-hidden-by-the-ancients malarky and discover thousands of Holy Grails, Atlantises, Lemurias, El Dorados, Alien Saucers etc.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
The Library of Alexandria caught fire several times.
The first may have been when the Romans conquered Egypt. The Romans burned their own ships and much of the city caught fire, and the library may have been partially destroyed at this time.
A branch of the library may have been burned with the destruction of pagan temples when the Roman Empire outlawed paganism, but nobody knows how many (if any) books were lost. The main building was apparently not affected. And by the time paganism was made illegal in the Roman Empire, a concerted effort had been made to have copies of important documents in other libraries, including the worlds largest library at Constantinople. These other libraries were not burned (though it's entirely possible that some books in them were destroyed).
And it was finally destroyed by the Muslim army. There is a story that the Caliph ordered the burning of books stating that if they contradicted the Quran they are heretical, and if they did not then they are redundant. There are no contemporary sources for this story, so most historians doubt it. Whether or not this burning was deliberate, the destruction was complete and library was lost to history.
Nope, it was finally destoyed by god himself. The library is now under water in the harbour of Alexandria following an earth quake in the 8th century.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The Library of Alexandria caught fire several times.
The first may have been when the Romans conquered Egypt. The Romans burned their own ships and much of the city caught fire, and the library may have been partially destroyed at this time.
A branch of the library may have been burned with the destruction of pagan temples when the Roman Empire outlawed paganism, but nobody knows how many (if any) books were lost. The main building was apparently not affected. And by the time paganism was made illegal in the Roman Empire, a concerted effort had been made to have copies of important documents in other libraries, including the worlds largest library at Constantinople. These other libraries were not burned (though it's entirely possible that some books in them were destroyed).
And it was finally destroyed by the Muslim army. There is a story that the Caliph ordered the burning of books stating that if they contradicted the Quran they are heretical, and if they did not then they are redundant. There are no contemporary sources for this story, so most historians doubt it. Whether or not this burning was deliberate, the destruction was complete and library was lost to history.
Now now now... why must you spoil a good atheist rant with more informed and level-headed information?
That's all we need, providing everyone with still more access to ancient text.
Two Paragraph spoiler summary if you want the CliffNotes version.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Hmmm, if I've got this correct, the item I just read says: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels—bring home for Emma."
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
You don't think the VERY first book that was EVER printed is worth saving? No matter whether you agree with the content, the book itself is part of our history (the content has also done a ton to shape our history as well)
Wish it was a bit easier to find the actual text. It would have also been cool to see the pages side by side. But still this is way cool.
Well, we lost the manual for the pyramids, anyway...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Does it have the missing first page from the bible that reads:
"Dedicated to my loving wife Sarah.
The stories contained herein are fictional, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
Yes and the US kill off Indian tribes, Germans created the holocaust and many other nations destroy and plundered land and people. We learn our lessoned and stop doing it in the present day. The article is about what is happening now and what they're doing with the manuscripts. That is what is important now.
???
I had thought the Chinese were the ones who invented the printing press. Gutenberg "independently" invented (or more likely stole) it later. So the first ever printed book was the Chinese version of the bible?
Printing press
Looks like the Chinese beat Gutenberg by 400 years with moveable type, and with fixed type by about 2000 years.
I find it funny how Europeans/Americans pretend China didn't exist until about 1960. My "public education" history classes in the USA didn't even mention China was a country until after WW2.
The one and only line-by-line English translation of Mahabharata, by Ganguli, a three decade effort stretching from 1860 to 1890, is on the public domain and can be downloaded for free. Very difficult to read, extremely voluminous. But there things some mind boggling stuff there.
For example, while describing the reign of Emperor Dushyant, it says, "In his days there were no farmers, there were no miners". Is it the folk memory of the days of hunter/gatherers/herders as remembered by later generations of farmers? Does "no miners" means it was a neolithic stone age culture? I have seen scholarly articles arguing that "the story of Cain and Abel is clearly the folk memory of the conflict between herders and farmers". But there is not much of work done on Mahabharata.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Story of their lives, knowledge is a great thing, isn't it? ;>
There are some reports that while it was finished in that last invasion, the library was already pretty much dead from budget cuts and infighting long before then. http://io9.com/the-great-library-at-alexandria-was-destroyed-by-budget-1442659066
Sounds similar to some of the struggles in the US.
I had no idea that ancient Hebrews had document scanners.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We'll summon the Old Ones yet!
.
The User Guide, the construction blueprints, or the Service and Maintenance guide?
It says: "Any similarity to persons dead or alive is purely coincidental."
Indeed it was the Romans who destroyed it first.
Here is an article I wrote years ago with references on really happened. The Arabs burning it may be a myth.
Who burned the Library of Alexandria.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The Vatican Library is not for "research," it is for brainwashing.
I mean, there's one of the eight copies of that manuscript by Abdul Alhazrad there....
mark
User guide for a pyramid?
Pg.1 Lie down in your sarcophagus.
The End.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The Gutenberg Bible can be viewed here.
The beautiful colour woodcuts in Stamp.Ross.283 can be viewed here.
Well, the user guide would probably contain information about how to arm all the traps they built into it.
Thats the Public General Release version. The CPUG ("Confidential Pyramid User Guide") available to paid members of the Pyramid Consortium presumably contain the chapters "Initiation of Afterlife Sequence", "Suggested Ancillary Tomb Items", "Pyramid Power Generation and Interfacing" and of course "Extraterrestrial Post-Install Customer Service".
Fuck you, troll.
Well, which rock was the one they left the keys to the ignition under, would be under Users guide.....
We could reverse engineer the rest.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!