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The first thing that catches an archaeologist's eye on the small piece of papyrus from Elephantine Island on the Nile is the apparently blank patch. Researchers from the Egyptian Museum, Berlin universities and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have now used the synchrotron radiation from BESSY II to unveil its secret. This pushes the door wide open for analysing the giant Berlin papyrus collection and many more... Scholars in ancient Egypt typically wrote with a black soot ink made from charred pieces of wood or bone and which consisted mainly of elemental carbon. "For certain purposes, however, the ancient Egyptians also used coloured...

A 1700-year-old letter that was recently discovered is said to reveal the way Christians actually lived centuries ago.230 AD The Papyrus P.Bas. 2.43 was written by a man named Arrianus to his brother Paulus, who was believed to be named after the apostle Paul. The letter has been dated to 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.It describes day-to-day family matters and provides insight into the world of the first Christians in the Roman Empire.“The earliest Christians in the Roman Empire are usually portrayed as eccentrics who withdrew from the world...

Although it is the world’s oldest continually operating library, dating back to the 6th century, the collection of manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai is no stranger to the latest technology. In 2012, they began spectral imaging on many of the manuscripts to discover the texts beneath the texts. Many of the manuscripts are palimpsests, meaning a previous text had been erased so the scribe could reuse the valuable parchments. Traces of the original texts remained, however. Now the monastery has begun a high-tech process of digitizing its 4,500 manuscripts—a process that could easily take...

A certain Valerius and a certain Athanasius lived during the 5th century AD in Egypt. 1500 years ago, the certain Valerius wrote a letter to Athanasius in Ancient Greek. The letter contained insults and threats of lashing and burning. A fragment of the letter,  written on a Papyrus was translated by scientists. "You trickster, you traitor, you son of a b**** ..." Valerius writes to Athanasius. However, the reason why Valerius was fuming so much remains unknown as the rest of the papyrus is missing. An x-rated papyrus? 'Valerius to Athanasius: You trickster, you traitor, you son of a b****...

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne. The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying... "But what they...

Six years ago, Dan Wallace announced in a debate with Bart Ehrman that a paleographer had dated a recently-found papyrus fragment of Mark to the first century. Since then, I’ve received many requests for updates, and I finally have one to give. The fragment has now been published, and there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that its official date is late second or early third century. Dan Wallace has written a post explaining what happened and offering an apology. Here’s a brief excerpt: In my debate with Bart, I mentioned that I had it on...

Rich pickings The library of the Mouseion in Alexandria may have ceased to exist but evidence of what it once contained can be gleaned from fragments of papyri found elsewhere in Egypt, writes Jill Kamil. Thanks to Egypt's dry climate and warm desert sand, papyrus texts in fragile and fragmentary form have survived from many sites -- among them Fayoum and Middle and Upper Egypt -- with the most expansive horde coming from Oxyrhynchus (modern Al-Bahnasa), a vast Graeco-Roman city once second in importance only to Alexandria. Oxyrhynchus was little more than a mass of ruins when, back in...

Some intriguing news from the world of archeology: Spanish archaeologists have discovered what may be one of the earliest depictions of Jesus in an ancient Egyptian tomb.Painted on the walls of a mysterious underground stone structure in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, about 100 miles south of Cairo, the image shows a young man with curly hair and dressed in a short tunic.“He raises his hand as if making a blessing,” said Egyptologist Josep Padró, who has spent over 20 years excavating sites in the area.In this expedition, he led a team of archaeologists from the University of Barcelona,...

Oxford University is asking for help deciphering ancient Greek texts written on fragments of papyrus found in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of images have gone on display on a website which encourages armchair archaeologists to help catalogue and translate them. Researchers hope the collective effort will give them a unique insight into life in Egypt nearly 2,000 years ago... The collection is made up of papyri recovered in the early 20th Century from the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the so-called "City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish". At the time the city was under Greek rule. Later the Romans settled the...

In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures. In the process, they're uncovering unexpected troves of new finds, including never-before-seen versions of the Christian Gospels, fragments of Greek poetry and commentaries on Aristotle. Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable -- blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph...

Classical Greek and Roman literature is being read for the first time in 2,000 years thanks to new technology. The previously illegible texts are among a hoard of papyrus manuscripts. Scholars say the rediscovered writings will provide a fascinating new window into the ancient world. Salvaged from an ancient garbage dump in Egypt, the collection is kept at Oxford University in England. Known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the collection includes writings by great classical Greek authors such as Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides. Using a technique called multi-spectral imaging, researchers have uncovered texts that include • parts of a lost tragedy...

The purpose of this chronology is to assist Christians of any denomination in their search for knowledge and truth regarding the development of the Christian religion. The primary sources used in assembling this list include a chronology by Paul Harvey, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, the Academic American Encyclopedia (on Compuserve), Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, and The English Versions of the Bible by John Berchmans Dockery O.F.M. Question marks on dates indicate approximate dates, question marks on other information indicates information which is theoretical and/or not universally accepted as fact. 1AD-36? Life of Jesus Christ 1AD First year...

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.

Oxyrhynchus, situated on a tributary of the Nile 100 miles south of Cairo, was a prosperous regional capital and the third city of Egypt, with 35,000 people. It was populated mainly by Greek immigrants, who left behind tons of papyri upon which slaves trained in Greek had documented the community's arts and goings-on. A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail. The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase...

EUREKA! EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY UNLOCKS SECRETS OF THE ANCIENTS Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world.

I post this scholarly paper to compliment the link on DRUDGE:Eureka! Extraordinary discovery unlocks secrets of the ancients Summary:Seventeen newly published manuscripts of the Greek New Testament (comprising a new portion of P77 as well as P100-P115) are introduced and then discussed individually, with special attention to two groups of manuscripts: seven of Matthew and four of John. The material offers important new evidence on a range of text-critical issues and three passages are discussed (Mt. 23:38; Jn. 1:34; Rev. 13:18). I. Introduction:Within the last three years seventeen previously unknown papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament have been...

The newest volume of Oxyrhynchus Papyri contains a fragmentary papyrus of Revelation which is the earliest known witness to some sections (late third / early fourth century). A detailed discussion of its place in the MS tradition is given in the printed volume. You will find images at 150dpi and 300dpi in the papyri section of this site, accessible from the main menu. One feature of particular interest is the number that this papyrus assigns to the Beast: 616, rather than the usual 666. (665 is also found.) We knew that this variant existed: Irenaeus cites (and refutes) it. But...

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...