Last summer, on the train at her home in Pordenone, northern Italy, Giulia Rossetto, an expert on ancient literature at the University of Vienna, opened her laptop and opened a series of books titled "** * Newly discovered 66" manuscript photo,
It is no ordinary manuscript. In ancient times, it was a common practice for parchments to be reused only by scraping the ink off old manuscripts with chemicals or pumice stones. The resulting double text is known as a palindrome, and the manuscript Rossetto was working on contained several pages of a Christian text, a collection of the lives of saints written in 10th-century Christian language, with an even older text hidden underneath. Text, in the vaguest Greek. Nothing is known about what is contained in the "manuscripts." Rossetto was a doctoral student and was treated as an afterthought when an older academic complained that reading the photos was beyond the scope of his failing eyesight.
, but these are no ordinary photos either. They used a state-of-the-art technology called multispectral imaging, or MSI, in which each page of text was photographed many times, illuminated with different colors and wavelengths of light, and then analyzed using computer algorithms to find a The binarization that most clearly distinguishes these two layers of text. As Roseto's train speeds through the Austrian Alps, she flips back and forth between the two images, adjusting contrast, brightness and hue to minimize the appearance of *** overtones while picking out tiny Greek letters, Each one is approximately three millimeters tall.
The style of the script suggests that it was probably written in Egypt in the fifth or sixth century, and Rossetto was anticipating another Christian text. Instead, she began to see mythical names: Persephone, Zeus, Dionysus. The missing text is ancient Greek.
There is no internet connection on the train. But once home, Rossetto rushed to her computer and checked her transcripts against known classical texts. "I tried different combinations, but nothing came of it," she recalls. "I thought, 'Wow, this is something new.' '"
In his poem "Endymion," based on the Greek myth of a shepherd beloved by the moon goddess Selena, John Keats praises the excellence of The staying power of a work of art He wrote: “Beautiful things are always a joy. ". "Its loveliness grows day by day; it never becomes nothingness. "Uncovering lost poetry from an ancient civilization from which we draw so much of its literary tradition is undoubtedly as exciting as unearthing any material treasure.
This promise transcends aesthetics. When classical Greek literature When rediscovered during the European Renaissance, it reshaped Western civilization and sowed seeds that influence our lives today: Thomas Jefferson's ideas on the pursuit of happiness were inspired by Greek philosophers; feminism was inspired by Euripides Inspired by his heroine Media. Like finding an old photo of a long-dead relative, discovering a lost text can help us see the people in front of us.
Roseto's. The text is just one of hundreds recently announced to have been recovered by researchers involved in a project to decipher the secrets of a unique treasure trove. In Egypt's Sinai Desert, a monastery called the Monastery of St. Catherine is home to the world's oldest continuously functioning library. It has been used by monks since the fourth century. In addition to printed books, the library houses more than 3,000 manuscripts, which have been preserved remarkably well by the monks of St. Catherine's Church over the centuries. They were particularly fond of using old parchments to write religious texts. Today, the library preserves at least 160 of what may be the largest collection in the world, but ancient scribes did their job frustratingly well. For the most part, the text below was hidden, and until now, people have lost their minds.
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St. Catherine's Church, a 25-year-old church. A community of Greek Orthodox monks around the foot of Mount Sinai, ancient traditions that transcend history continue to this day. The first written mention of it comes from a fourth-century pilgrim named Egeria. Describes how monks read biblical passages to her when she visited a chapel built to commemorate Moses' burning bush, which the Byzantine emperor Justinian protected with massive granite walls in the sixth century. The chapel. Fifteen hundred years later, they stand intact.
As you approach it, the sand-colored monastery nestled under the mountain looks humble and timeless, like a desert. East and west. Inside are stone steps, arches and alleys, and a square bell tower directs the eye to the jagged peaks above. Despite the rise and fall of civilization around it, life here remains little changed. The second daily service still starts at 4 a.m., and the center of St. Catherine's Church, now as in Egeria's time, is the library, headed by the priest Justin Sinette, who has long hair. Justin, who has a long gray beard and wears traditional black robes, was born in Texas to his father and received a Protestant education. He discovered Greek orthodoxy while studying Byzantine history at the University of Texas at Austin.
After his conversion, he lived in a monastery in Massachusetts for more than 20 years, where he became adept at using computers and desktop publishing technology as director of the monastery's publications. In 1996, Father Justin moved to St. Catherine's Monastery and when the Abbot decided to digitize the library's collection of manuscripts to make them available to scholars around the world, Father Justin was asked to lead the effort.
When I reached Egypt’s Father Justin by phone this fall, he was thoughtful and articulate, giving the impression that, like the monastery itself, it existed on a plane beyond worldly limitations. . When asked to describe the actual size of the library, he seemed confused at first. "I don't think so," he said. During our conversations, he often answered my questions with stories from hundreds of years ago. Since only the librarian had access to the library's vaults, the manuscripts were always handed to him one after another, their dark edges and drops of candle wax bearing witness to centuries of wear and use. "I'd love to go in and see other stuff, but I can't," he said. About ten years ago, "They asked me to be a librarian."
Finally the complete collection, including duplicates, could be explored. The problem is, there doesn't seem to be much hope in reading them. But in 2008, researchers in the United States announced the completion of a ten-year project that will use multispectral imaging technology to read the lost liturgical text of Greek mathematician Archimedes hidden beneath the 13th-century Byzantine prayer book. works. Father Justin already knew members of the group, and he asked them if they would like to go to St. Catherine's. The collaborative project, known as the Sinaitic Copy Project, was led by Michael Philp of the California Early Manuscripts Electronic Library Directed by Si, a nonprofit research organization that partners with universities such as UCLA and other institutions to digitize historical materials and make them accessible for study. Beginning in 2011, Phelps and other members of the project made 15 visits to the monastery over a five-year period, each time involving ongoing battles between Egyptian security forces and *** militants in the Sinai Desert. The location of the conflict) travels for several hours. Many of them were the 1,100 manuscripts discovered in 1975 in a tower on the monastery's north wall, including damaged leaves left behind when the library was moved in the 18th century and hidden for protection after the earthquake. They are drier, break into pieces, and are often eaten by rats. The Pantext is an 11th-century liturgical text in Syriac. (Courtesy of the Monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai, Egypt) The text below is a 9th-century Syriac translation of a pharmacopoeial manual by the Greek physician Galen. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) Sherfmark: *** Text New Discovery 8. Hypertext - A reproduction of an ancient Greek medical text from the 5th or 6th century. This folio describes the surgical procedure for removing polyps from the nose. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) Sherfmark: *** Text New Discovery 8. Manual - An ancient Greek medical text from the 5th or 6th century. This folio describes the surgical procedure for removing polyps from the nose. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) Sherfmark: *** Text New Discovery 8. Hypertext - A second unknown ancient Greek medical text, a 5th or 6th century copy of the Glossary of Ancient Greek Medical Terms. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) Sherfmark: *** Text New Discovery 8. Lower Text - A second unknown classical Greek medical text from the 5th or 6th century, A Glossary of Ancient Greek Medical Terminology. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) Sherfmark: *** New Discovery 8. Pantext - oldest surviving *** translation of the Christian Gospels (late 8th or 9th century). (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt) A book of Greek medical illustrations was found beneath the oldest translation of the Gospels in ***. (Courtesy of St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt)
Father Justin takes out each relic in turn, photographed by Damianos Kasotakis, the project's lead videographer, He used a 50-megapixel camera custom-made in California. It takes about seven minutes to photograph each page, with the shutter clicking continuously while the page is illuminated by infrared, visible and ultraviolet light, which travel across the spectrum. The researchers used different filters, lighting from odd angles, anything they could think of that might help pick out details from the surface of the page. A team of U.S. imaging experts then "superimposed" the images of each page into a "digital cube" and designed algorithms, some based on satellite imaging technology, to most clearly identify and enhance the letters underneath the hypertext. .
"You just throw everything you can think of at it," Kasotakis said, "and hope for the best."
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Maybe someone is listening. Late last month, the Monastic and Early Manuscript Electronic Library announced at a conference in Athens that 6,800 pages of images they had extracted from 74 copies over the past five years would be available to UCLA at some point in early 2018. Access these images online at any time. Their work so far has revealed more than 284 deleted texts in 10 languages, including Classical, Christian and Jewish texts from the 5th to 12th centuries.
The collection was culled from some of the greatest manuscript finds of the 20th century, including Egypt's Nag Hammadi Codex and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
As part of the Sinai Copy Project, more than two dozen scholars from Europe, the United States and the Middle East are poring over the texts. One of the most exciting finds was a copy consisting of fragments of at least ten old books. The manuscript is an important text in its own right: the earliest known version of the Christian Gospels in ***, dating from the eighth or ninth centuries. But Phelps predicts that what's behind it will make it a "celebrity manuscript" - a collection of previously unknown medical documents dating back to the fifth and sixth centuries, including drug formulas, surgical instructions ( including how to remove tumors), and other texts that may provide clues to the foundations of ancient medicine.
Another excerpt from the article contains a beautiful two-page illustration of a flowering plant from a "herb," ??or guide to medicinal plants, by Oxford University classical scholar Nye Nigel Wilson is researching the text, which he believes may be the work of Klaatu As a physician, Anatolian king Mithridates became obsessed with poison in the first century BC. Copies of his paintings still exist 600 years after his death, but until now we only knew of his work as a reference to the first-century physician Dioscorides. "These are the first fragments we have from an actual manuscript of his work, from the same copy by Agamenon Tselikas, director of the Center for History and Palaeogeography in Athens," Wilson said.
, the earliest known version of a classic text by Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, has been found, four centuries older than any previously known copy. Other fragments include some unexpected ones. Fragments, such as a version of the ancient Greek adventure story "Apollonius of Tire", which is the oldest known Latin translation and the earliest illustrated version 500 years ago.
Giulia Rossetto discovered her famous manuscript on a train back to Italy and is still piecing together the meaning of her discovery. So far, she has deciphered 89 lines of text (many of which are complete) and learn that they belong to a previously unknown Greek hexagonal poem, the same format used in Homer's epic poems. They tell a myth, Dionysus, Zeus and Perse. Fournier's son, who sat on the throne, was surrounded by a group of murderous Titans trying to win his trust. Roseto also discovered the number 23 in the text, which she believed represented a book number, which she said suggested the lines might have come from. The Rhapsody, lines which the ancients believed to have been written by the mythical poet Orpheus, are collected in 24 books and, like the poems of Homer, have been widely studied since at least the sixth century, but today only sporadically by later philosophers. The discovery was probably a once-in-a-generation thing, said Claudia Rapp, a professor of Byzantine studies at the University of Vienna and Rossetto’s mentor. “Everyone is working with the latest materials. The dream was to find previously unknown classical texts from pagan antiquities. ”
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The secrets of each individual manuscript will keep scholars busy for years. However, in addition to the many texts, this project There's a greater discovery of Revelations: the surprising history of St. Catherine's Church itself
Rapp, who is also the academic director of the Sinai Project, is particularly interested in learning what these palindromes reveal about the parchment. The process by which paper is repurposed. There is no clear hierarchy between the two languages. In fact, scattered pages from multiple old manuscripts in different languages ??are often combined to form a new book. It was not the case that individual scribes picked out manuscripts to scrape clean for personal use, but rather suggested organized production, and even commercial circulation, of recycled parchments. The sites included. (Getty Images)
And the variety of languages ??discovered were completely unexpected. Some of the texts even help reconstruct lost languages, including Caucasian, spoken by an ancient kingdom in what is now Azerbaijan. Albanian, and the Christian-Palestinian Aramaic spoken by Palestinian Christians before the 13th century
Researchers have also discovered some Greek texts that were translated into Syriac, which was used by Syriac Christians throughout what became the 13th century. We already know that this language was first spoken before the major literary languages ??of the Middle East, in the 8th and 9th centuries, when the Caliphate in Baghdad sponsored a vast project to translate Greek classical knowledge into Syriac. * Slang (a project that helped preserve much of Western classical knowledge during the Dark Ages). These Syriac texts indicate that Christian scholars at St. Catherine's Church were part of this effort. "We can see this great transformation," Phelps said. Related movements in the process, ”
Each surprise adds a piece to the puzzle.
Two unknown Christian scriptures have been found in ancient Greek, suggesting that Ethiopian monks may have practiced in monasteries, and they are not thought to have had much contact with Sinai in ancient times. One of the palimpsests was called a "Sinai sandwich" by Michelle Brown, former director of the British Library in London, because it suggested the connection between four different layers of text. The relationship is compelling. Its oldest layer is written in Greek and is in the Church of St. Catherine. The next level is a manuscript of the Latin script used in Italy in the early 7th century, and then the Latin Insular script of the 8th century, a writing style pioneered by Irish monks and prevalent in the British Isles. On the top floor are *** texts written in St.Catherine's church in the early 10th century.
It was a real breakthrough—a "smoking gun," Brown said. Scholars believe that there was little contact between the Middle East and the West in the Middle Ages before the Crusades, but Brown suggests this view from the fragments and other fragments she has recovered from St. Catherine's Church. is wrong. The layering of these scripts revealed by the new images supports her intuition. From Sinai to Rome to Britain and back again is highly improbable. Instead, she says, monks from these various Western communities must have been working at St. Catherine's Church over the centuries.
Put it all together and what happens to our view of this humble outpost? changed. We might think of the Sinai Desert as merely a remote wilderness where the Jews wandered for decades after escaping slavery in Egypt. But these diverse discoveries provide striking evidence of St. Catherine's role as a vibrant international center and an important role in the cultural history of East and West, where people of different languages ??and communities met, exchanged practices and intellectual tradition. “This is a place where people make the effort to travel,” Rapp said. "They come from all over the world."
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For Father Justin, this project represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand what he calls the A "living tradition" where each manuscript is not only a sacred object but a tangible testimony to a visitor from the distant past. The monastery walls have protected the manuscripts for centuries, but the political situation outside remains volatile; last spring, militants allied with the Nazis killed a police officer just a few hundred yards from the monastery gates. Although Fr Justin insists the danger is not representative, he hopes the imaging project will help preserve the manuscript's treasure for centuries, saying: "This is our obligation and our challenge today.
” Subscribe to Smithsonian Magazine now for only $12. This article is from the January/February issue of Smithsonian Magazine