Researchers Find Rare Letters From Fifth Century Gaza Strip

AFP ^ | 1-24-2005

[blam]

Researchers find rare letters from fifth century Gaza Strip

Mon Jan 24, 3:48 PM ET Mideast - AFP

GENEVA (AFP) - Swiss researchers have uncovered a rare exchange of letters written in ancient Greek during the fifth century in what is now the Gaza Strip , the University of Fribourg said.

The discovery offers proof of a rich intellectual society in a region that is better known today for a bitter and bloody standoff between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, said one of the researchers, Professor Jacques Schamp.

Located amid mounds of manuscripts stored at the Marciana National Library in Venice and the French National Library in Paris, the unpublished texts from an ancient school of philosophy in Gaza were identified after a one-year search, he told AFP.

"They have helped us to learn about people that we knew nothing about until now," said Schamp, who conducted the work with his assistant doctor Eugenio Amato.

The oldest discovery is an exchange of letters between a philosopher called Procopius of Gaza who lived around the years 465 to 529 and a young, and until now unknown, lawyer called Megethios.

"The discovery is important because it is practically impossible today to get your hands on material dated from the fifth century," Fribourg University, which helped to fund the research, said in a statement.

Such correspondence was unprecedented, said Schamp, noting that researchers sometimes found letters from a Mr X addressed to a Mr Y but never the response.

"Here, we really have an exchange with a letter from Mr X and a response from Mr Y. It is extremely rare. For me, it is the only case that I know of," he said.

The documents also offer fresh information on life in ancient Gaza.

"We see that there was an extremely rich intellectual life and that people knew Greek literature to an admirable level," said Schamp.

Researchers spend years hunting for unknown texts hidden amongst thousands of ancient manuscripts stored, sometimes without any records being made, at national libraries in major cities across Europe.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[billorites]

"We see that there was an extremely rich intellectual life and that people knew Greek literature to an admirable level," said Schamp.

Then the Palestinians moved into the neighborhood.

[tet68]

Lawyers, the true sign of civilization or it's decline.

[billorites]

77 Gaza Strip?

[muawiyah]

Materials like these are extremely rare. For one thing they belong to the immediate pre-Dark Age period (recalling that it began, on schedule, precisely in 538AD, more or less, but we lost track of the years things were so bad).

No doubt such collections existed all over the Roman world, even the West, prior to that year, but most of them were probably burned for heat in 539 AD, or used for mulch by 560 AD once literacy was mostly extinguished except in the Eastern Mediterranean.

These guys must have been turning cartwheels naked, rolling down the street in front of the museum where the manuscripts were found.

Truly amazing story!

[Alouette]

"We see that there was an extremely rich intellectual life and that people knew Greek literature to an admirable level,"

Proof that they could not have been Palestinians.

[Little Bill]

Try to find the verb and the allusions(sp). I tried, or was tasked, to do a translation from a document from about 600, in a Classical Greek class, sounded like a modern management course, all fluff and no substance.

[ken21]

a lawyer of greatness!

how modern!

[blam]

"Materials like these are extremely rare. For one thing they belong to the immediate pre-Dark Age period (recalling that it began, on schedule, precisely in 538AD, more or less, but we lost track of the years things were so bad)."

Yup. One of my favorite threads.

The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?

[Verginius Rufus]

It sounds like they have found some new texts which were not previously known, but Procopius of Gaza was already known and some of his letters were preserved. He also wrote speeches and theological works. Choricius of Gaza, a student of his, also left writings which are preserved.

[The_Reader_David]

Of course in the Eastern Mediterranean, there was no "Dark Age" until the rise of Islam (though Greece itself outside the immediate orbit of Constantinople underwent one due to a Slavic invasion a bit later than the onset of the Western Dark Ages), and even then classical learning wasn't forgotten.

Not only were folks in the 6th century fully literate and conversant with classical literature as well as Scripture, the preservation of literacy and classical learning in the Empire persisted down until its fall in 1453, when the flight of Greek scholars to Venice and the surrounding region of Italy was the impetus for the Renaissance.

St. Photius the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 9th century was a notable humanist, conversant with the pagan classics in literature and philosophy as well as Scripture and the writings of the earlier Church Fathers.

Anna Comnena's 11th century biography of her father the Emperor Alexis I, The Alexiad, is rife with classical allusions. (Note: at least in the greater houses, the women were both literate and well educated--indeed enough sources attest to women educating their children in grammar, that apparently literacy, though not formal education, seems to have been common among men and women in all strata of society.)

[muawiyah]

Lots and lots of folks like to believe that the Eastern Mediterranean did not have a "Dark Age". At the same time they have to gloss over the fact that for a period of 70 years not a single art work of any worth was produced, and the stuff on the farside of that 70 year period really wasn't up to the caliber of that on the nearside just before it started.

Then, too, there were suddenly Slavic speaking immigrants living in Greece itself, and throughout Anatolia, and absolutely no one bothered to make a record of their arrival, or to even appear to be interested in the phenomenon.

This is startling considering the vast sums the Eastern Empire had previously been spending to keep these people out!!!!

Fortunately there were enough people left so they could write about Justinian's Plague, and that, by itself, is remarkable since it left North Africa virtually unpopulated, and continental Western Europe simply disappeared as a place where humans lived.

China didn't bother to do anything for the next 500 years, not even trade luxury goods and gold with the Eastern Empire. The Silk Road simply disappeared and wasn't mentioned again for centuries.

But, there were bright spots. Mecca and Medina were relatively big time in that period, as was Petra ~ although the people there were incredibly poor, they were alive, had enough to eat, and actually managed to continue running a major site of religious pilgrimmage. They were even literate.

Imagine their surprise when shortly after Mohammad's death they were able to conquer the next nearest Byzantine province in a couple of days ~ and then roll on over everything but the old core area almost without resistance.

I think the fact that the good old boys in Mecca were able to absorb almost the entirity of the remainder of world civilization in a decade to be one which gives us an idea of exactly how terrible the Dark Age had been. It was bad; real bad; horrible; so bad that people forgot to write about it, even in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Byzantium's core area is frequently pointed to as an exception, and true enough the old city encompassed a vast area which was fully protected by walls. It also had on hand sufficient food for a 7 year siege. Since the events which precipitated the Dark Ages were of shorter duration, the city was able to survive and reassert order, although not to the degree it had before the Dark Ages.

We can envision Orthodox monks staring over the walls into the wilderness beyond writing down their thoughts about how red the sunsets were, and lo, and behold, we have such ancient documents available. On the other hand, the Byzantines did not, themselves, bother to take expeditions to the nether regions to see what had happened to everybody else. They had to wait centuries until new civilizations arose and folks from Venice could bring in mounted French knights to finally loot their precious city.

[Marano NYC]

Note the language was Greek. The area was doing quite well culturally until it was invaded.

[Grut]

I tried, or was tasked, to do a translation from a document from about 600, in a Classical Greek class, sounded like a modern management course, all fluff and no substance.

Lemmee guess: "The Divine Names" by Pseudodionysus, right?

[The_Reader_David]

Of course, you discount the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the monophysites for defending the territory of the 'melkite' Emperor.

Now which 70 years was that? Certainly not during the reign of Justinian or his immediate successors during which notable iconography graced newly completed churches in Ravenna. Ones just before the iconoclasts took up the wholesale destruction of religious art?

And I guess George of Pisidia, the best secular poet of the Christian Imperial period doesn't count for anything, nor the composition of some of the most moving devotional poetry ever written (to my mind in any religious tradition)--the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.

And wouldn't you know, the silk trade between the Empire and China died out just when some Christian monks manged to smuggle silkworm eggs back to Constantinople, c. 553, beginning an industry which lasted until the Empire fell.

[muawiyah]

Since silk wasn't the only valuable item carried on the Silk Road, and China itself suffered an incontrovertible Dark Age at the time, we'll just ignore that. A recent newsbrief in Science News indicated that European silkworms are actually descended from an entirely different insect than those used in China anyway.

Then there are the Iconoclasts. There was some stir in the 4th century, but there was a significant pause until the 8th century, and then only in the Eastern church. The Dark Ages began on or about 538 AD (and there's a fellow who has scientific evidence regarding the specific date the catastrophe that precipitated it happened). Anyway, 538 is in the 6th century.

BTW, BEFORE the Dark Ages began there really were more places of interest in the Roman world than AFTER. Things did not really revolve around Byzantium and its environs.

[muawiyah]

Greek continues to be taught and spoken in many places.

Not sure what that means concerning the onset of the Dark Ages. Do you think speaking Greek had something to do with bringing on the environmental catastrophe that precipitated that period? If so, maybe the French, Germans and Spanish ought to pursue raparations from Greece and Turkey!

And what about the Italians? My goodness, they started it all and look what happened to them.

[OldCorps]

Researchers find rare letters from fifth century Gaza Strip

Yet another example of the incompetence of the journalistic class. This headline is similar to the ones we see all the time in which malevolent SUV's are wantonly attacking people. In this case we have a inanimate object, land, writing letters.

[goldstategop]

The Eastern Roman Empire held all the great cities and the bulk of the population a century after Constantine transferred the seat of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople.

Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."