hummingwolf | (no subject)

In the news: Languagehat said "I'm having a hard time believing this is real, but April 1st was a long time ago," and I'm feeling the same way. Assuming it's not a hoax, however (and why would it be? I so want this to be real), one should expect to hear multitudes of scholars and classics geeks burst into fangirly squeeing over this:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

Also from the news, via

religionnewsblo, your fun phrase of the day is "Polygamous zombie vampires".

I was going to say something else, but I can't think of a way to beat polygamous zombie vampires.

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the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

*drool*

Yeah, that was kinda my reaction after the ::Squee!::.

Wow. Just WOW! =:D

Oh yes indeed.

It's real...and it's awesome.

The only thing better would be finding a backup archive of the Library of Alexandria.

It's the sheer coolness of the thing that makes it so hard to believe. Saying anything more coherent about it than "WOW" is pretty difficult.

That sounds amazing. (The story, I mean. The vampires are just kind of scary.)

Heh. Yes, I love the papyri news! The vampire zombies were included solely for the amusement factor. :-)