Slashdot Mirror
Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World's Oldest Continuously Run Libraries (smithsonianmag.com)
Saint Catherine's Monastery, a sacred Christian site nestled in the shadow of Mount Sinai, is home to one of the world's oldest continuously used libraries. Thousands of manuscripts and books are kept there -- some of which contain hidden treasures. An anonymous reader shares a report: Now, a team of researchers is using new technology to uncover texts that were erased and written over by the monks who lived and worked at the monastery. Many of these original texts were written in languages well known to researchers -- Latin, Greek, Arabic -- but others were inscribed in long-lost languages that are rarely seen in the historical record. Manuscripts with multiple layers of writing are known as palimpsests, and there are about 130 of them at St. Catherine's Monastery, according to the website of the Early Manuscript Electronic Library, which has been leading the initiative to uncover the original texts. With the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Christian sites in the Sinai Desert began to disappear, and Saint Catherine's found itself in relative isolation. Monks turned to reusing older parchments when supplies at the monastery ran scarce. To uncover the palimpsests' secret texts, researchers photographed thousands of pages multiple times, illuminating each page with different-colored lights. They also photographed the pages with light shining onto them from behind, or from an oblique angle, which helped "highlight tiny bumps and depressions in the surface," Gray writes. They then fed the information into a computer algorithm, which is able to distinguish the more recent texts from the originals.
Not exactly. Palimpsets are on parchment not paper, and the method works in part because classical methods of writing used thick ink that was there for a long time which was then scraped away. Doing this with modern ink on a piece of paper is a very different story.
But perhaps the most intriguing finds are the manuscripts written in obscure languages that fell out of use many centuries ago. Two of the erased texts, for instance, were inked in Caucasian Albanian, a language spoken by Christians in what is now Azerbaijan. According to Sarah Laskow of Atlas Obscura, Caucasian Albanian only exists today in a few stone inscriptions. Michael Phelps, director of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, tells Gray of the Atlantic that the discovery of Caucasian Albanian writings at Saint Catherine’s library has helped scholars increase their knowledge of the language’s vocabulary, giving them words for things like “net” and “fish.”
Other hidden texts were written in a defunct dialect known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a mix of Syriac and Greek, which was discontinued in the 13th century only to be rediscovered by scholars in the 18th century.
Of course, with sea related words discovered, the obvious line of jokes is to connect this with the Deep Ones, Dagon and Cthulhu. No doubt, the true horror in the more obscure texts is being kept quiet, possibly known only to the Laundry and the Black Chamber.
...that Islam is a relatively new religion in the Middle East, and that both Judaism and Christianity predated it by centuries? How can that be?
A co-worker has complained to our manager, when I pointed a similar fact out during a conversation.
The manager then reprimanded me pointing out the company's policy against "harassment" — even though no one on our team is a Muslim.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wonder if they'll find some Klingon texts.
"Today, I am to do battle with this book. I will mercilessly stab the book with my pen, until it dies the final death. On the way to Kahless, it will bleed the appropriate text onto its page-like corpse."
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The parchment was much to expensive, much to valuable to simply burn. It was a relatively easy task to scrape off the old ink.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
It's not another language, it's just scribes writing random things over the old text a million times to obscure what was originally there.
Nullius in verba
Because there's a difference between burning books at some points in time (which Christianity certainly did, as did many other religious and ideologies) and burning books being such a complete default that one should be "surprised" by it. In that context, just like some of the other Islam related comments in this thread, it is classic trolling, and if sincere says more about the people making the statements than it does about the groups they are making comments about.
Why? Because it is? I know that you're a small minded individual unable to critically think but you might be shocked to learn that religion is not immediately anti-education or anti-science. For example, evolution has been considered "most probably fact" within the catholic church since the late 1800s. The pioneering work in evolution being done by a monk of all people. Toss in that for a very long time (we're talking centuries) if you wanted a science based education you went to the Jesuits (you'll be shocked to find out who they're associated with) and you'll start to understand what a moronic statements the OP as well as your post are making.
Current Text: Jesus wept... ...and said, "Damn those hot wings are spicy!"
Recovered Text:
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
With the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Christian sites in the Sinai Desert began to disappear,
The same thing is happening now in Europe
Book burnings, although they did happen, didn't happen early on. Before the printing press, books were very, very expensive and thus reserved only for the very rich and the church which, even after the printing press became ubiquitous, the church wanted to keep it that way, hence the book burnings. It's also why the mass is still held in Latin in many denominations or why Mother Teresa didn't actually help anyone, it's just a matter of keeping the poor dumb, sick and dependent on the church.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I'm surprised they didn't burn it.
You're confusing Christianity with Islam.
After 1,700 years, Buddhas fall to Taliban dynamite
The propensity of Muslims to destroy things even has multiple Wikipedia pages.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure some Thalidomide-brained idiot is going to drag up the Crusades or something else that happened a thousand fucking years ago in order to justify Islamic barbarity TODAY.
I thought the AIs mostly focused on 'Yo motherboard' jokes, like 'Yo motherboard so old it's only got ISA slots!' or 'Yo motherboards form factor is double-wide!'
If he is referring to Gregor Mendel(d. 1884), the founder of modern genetics, no they didn't.
They did promote him to be abbot of his abbey, where he didn't have time from science. I guess that's technically a confirmation of the Peter Principle.
Because there's a difference between burning books at some points in time (which Christianity certainly did, as did many other religious and ideologies) and burning books being such a complete default that one should be "surprised" by it. In that context, just like some of the other Islam related comments in this thread, it is classic trolling, and if sincere says more about the people making the statements than it does about the groups they are making comments about.
Says more what?
This is a nice example of "innuendo from nothing". It implies that the people in a debate are somehow inferior, while saying exactly nothing about them.
It's a cross between an ad-hominem attack and a stand-alone complex.
Shouldn't we focus on the debate instead of the character of the debater?
The confusion is deliberate. The left hates religion in general but Christians specifically. Thus they tend to assume Christians are guilty of things when in fact they aren't. For example most people don't know that in the crusades the Muslims were the original invaders and will self righteously say how Christians did the crusades just to kill brown people.
No, they're not. I live in the middle of one of those purported no-go zones. I'm no unsafer than anywhere in the country.
>Oh, like in the Crusades when sacking Christians armies would often wipe out every inhabitant-whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian-of a conquered city?
I know you are playing the moral equivalence game here, so it might be worthwhile for me to point out some salient facts:
1) I am not Christian, so I do not excuse any specific or general barbarity on the part of the Crusades by Christians.
2) Muslim conquests of the Levant and North Africa starting in the 7th Century triggered a three century long archeology dark age (also, a similar dark age throughout the Mediterranean). Populations collapsed from their Roman and post-Roman levels. The ecologies of the North Africa and Levant regions were destroyed, and to this day have yet to recover. Numerous Roman settlements were sacked and the inhabitants slaughtered, never to return. That's why you can go to Algeria or Libya or Syria and find intact Roman ruins today.
3) Christianity didn't have the concept of Holy War until exposed to Islamic Jihad. The Crusades were basically a Christian reaction to the Muslim Jihad which had been attacking Christian lands for a solid 350 years before the first Crusade kicked off, during which millions were killed, and millions more sold into slavery. The time frame of these Christian sites "disappearing" was during the initial Muslim conquest, when Christians and Christianity had done nothing to Islam or Muslims except not converting when it was demanded by Mohammed and his acolytes. So they got murdered by him and his followers, their books and buildings burned, and their children sold into slavery.
4) Despite all the supposed raping, plundering, and massacres at the hands of the Crusaders, they had almost no demographic impact on the region. Contrast that with the demographic impact of the initial Muslim conquests, and you come up with two different tales. Islam didn't fall into a dark age because the Crusades destroyed their cities, murdered their people, and destroyed their culture.
Please, your myth of the "Will to Truth" being widespread among any significant population is absurd. Humans have always been emotional reasoners. They will always be emotional reasoners. Your so-called bastions of critical thought and rationality are emotional reasoners, with their precious "rationality" chiming in every now and then.
The sooner we quit pretending that there was some halcyon era of widespread critical thinking among any population the sooner we can actually move forward. You sit here and decry Idiocracy and can't even understand that people are, and have always been, largely "stupid" and think emotionally far more than "rationally". Your persistent belief that we're somehow losing ground to irrational, emotional thinking is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to puff up your own ego.
"Oh look at me, I'm part of the Rational Critical Thinking Elite, bravely steering Humanity through the perils of ignorant emotional reasoning! Please, tell me more how amazing my faculties for reason are! Never mind my deep seated need for such reinforcement is itself emotional reasoning, it's irrelevant!"
Get the fuck out of here with that shit, you're pathetic.
If he is referring to Gregor Mendel(d. 1884), the founder of modern genetics, no they didn't.
They did promote him to be abbot of his abbey, where he didn't have time from science. I guess that's technically a confirmation of the Peter Principle.
If the Peter Principle is divinely proven, does that mean it applies to God as well??
That would explain sooo much.
Strange...I have distinct memories of reading of wars the Jews were commanded by God to wage, sometimes without mercy. At least some of these were described in the collection of books that became the Christian Bible.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes