Ancient public library discovered in Germany • Hacker News Board

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#31

Post by arketyp » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

olavk wrote: post #26

gooseus wrote: post #2

They didn't mention it, but I'm assuming that no scrolls or actual library knowledge is recoverable from the site? Whenever I listen to history people talk about all the sources that have been lost, I dream that someday someone will uncover an ancient time capsule under their house and find a pristine collection of lost works that some wise person squirreled away for future generations.

An Egyptologist told me there are enough unstudied papyri in archives to keep all researchers occupied for the next 100 years. Basically there is no need to dig anymore - the limiting factor is not finding the scrolls, it is studying them to figure out if they contain anything interesting.

Surely there's some order in this "reading list" where new discoveries can take priority based on circumstantial factors of the digging site alone.

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#32

Post by comex » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 7:39 AM UTC

singularity2001 wrote: post #29

matco11 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ancient and pristinely preserved do not really usually go together... but Villa Papyri, near Pompeii, almost gets you there. The villa's name derives from the discovery of its library, the only surviving library from the Graeco-Roman world that exists in its entirety. It contains over 1,800 papyrus scrolls. The scrolls are coarbonized and rolled up, but each scroll gets very slowly unrolled, read, studied and pr…

The linked methods don't look promising (yet) https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6895

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#33

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 8:51 AM UTC

gooseus wrote: post #2

They didn't mention it, but I'm assuming that no scrolls or actual library knowledge is recoverable from the site? Whenever I listen to history people talk about all the sources that have been lost, I dream that someday someone will uncover an ancient time capsule under their house and find a pristine collection of lost works that some wise person squirreled away for future generations.

There is work to recover the scrolls that were burned in Pompei and Herculaneum. I find that pretty remarkable.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-s...

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#34

Post by olavk » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 9:52 AM UTC

arketyp wrote: post #31

olavk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Egyptologist told me there are enough unstudied papyri in archives to keep all researchers occupied for the next 100 years. Basically there is no need to dig anymore - the limiting factor is not finding the scrolls, it is studying them to figure out if they contain anything interesting.

Surely there's some order in this "reading list" where new discoveries can take priority based on circumstantial factors of the digging site alone.

To some extent, but take a find like the Oxyrhynchus Papyri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri - it is basically a giant trash heap of unorganized papyrus fragments. It was discovered in 1896 and it still being cataloged! Most of it is uninteresting, but some amazing finds like a previously unknown play by Sophocles.

To quote Wikipedia: Since 1898 academics have puzzled together and transcribed over 5000 documents from what were originally hundreds of boxes of papyrus fragments the size of large cornflakes. This is thought to represent only 1 to 2 percent of what is estimated to be at least half a million papyri still remaining to be conserved, transcribed, deciphered and catalogued.

And that is just one find.

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#35

Post by mar77i » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

... how sure can they be it's not the town archive they lost to metro construction work a couple years ago?

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#36

Post by dan-robertson » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #16

ASalazarMX wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for cuneiform tablets, somewhere I read most of them are utterly boring, mostly inventory and transactions. Maybe you could pass years sifting through it to finally find something valuable.

In the aggregate that data might be incredibly valuable, and valuable in a way that might not be obvious to the gatekeepers of these materials. You never know what people can do with more data until you put it out there. But neither do the people who might do something with it, which I guess is why there's little funding for such endeavors. You need somebody with the money and conviction to make the gamble.

This is very true. A lot about civilisation can be learned from tax records but just because there are lots of tax records it does not mean they are particularly easy to read or to recognise, even for an expert.

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#37

Post by teilo » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #22

teilo wrote: post #7

I think the whole "public" library theory is a bit off. Just because it was a public building does not mean it was anything resembling what we would call a public library. More likely, it was a government library, like a registrar, or for tax documents, census data, or something similar.

That depends on perspective. Certainly any building that banned women would not sound very "public" today, but within the ancient context would fit the model. It may have been open to citizens, men, non-slaves, who could read. That would have been a very small group. Setting aside our modern notions of equality, that sounds like a public library to me.

Except all we know is that:

1) It was in a market area.

2) It was well built.

3) It had cubby holes that probably held scrolls.

That's all. The rest is speculation.

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#38

Post by sandworm101 » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

teilo wrote: post #37

sandworm101 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on perspective. Certainly any building that banned women would not sound very "public" today, but within the ancient context would fit the model. It may have been open to citizens, men, non-slaves, who could read. That would have been a very small group. Setting aside our modern notions of equality, that sounds like a public library to me.

Except all we know is that: 1) It was in a market area. 2) It was well built. 3) It had cubby holes that probably held scrolls. That's all. The rest is speculation.

That's all we have from digging up most historical buildings. People build careers on determining a building's use based on things like door width and wall thickness.

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#39

Post by steiner_j » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

zerealshadowban wrote: post #13

pluma wrote: post #8

What the article doesn't really clarify: Cologne was a Roman colony . The full name was Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. "Colonia" means "colony" but it's also the highest tier of recognition Roman cities could have. Cologne was the Eastern-most Roman city of its kind in "Germania". A side-effect of all of this is that you can't really dig anywhere in Cologne without encountering some Roman artifact or ruins (unle…

Since "colonia" originally denoted any Roman outpost established in conquered territory, you can't invoke the word as a singularly significant element of the city name. Mainz was also part of Germania and is much further East. The current extent of modern Köln is much wider than that of the Roman city of 20,000 people, so you'd have to dig in very specific places to find Roman artifacts.

The colonia status survives in the name, that's indeed the main significance. There were of course hundreds of coloniae. Some similar, in that the status also gave the town its name today. E.g. Lincoln, England from "Lindum Colonia". Not every outpost in conquered territory was a colonia though. Some were oppida, while others were military outposts

In contrast to CCAA and Augusta Treverorum, Mogontiacum (Mainz) was not a colonia. It was primarily a military post. The main difference is that citizens of a colonia were in fact fully Roman with all the rights and duties. It was also part of a different province - Germania Superior, whereas CCAA was the centre of Germania Inferior.

Mogontiacum (Mainz) is further east than CCAA. One of it's purposes was to secure the Limes, but there was a comfortable buffer between the Limes and the town itself. Further north, the wilderness basically began when you crossed the Rhine at Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) or in fact CCAA...

You'll find the majority of Roman artifacts in an area roughly a third of the size of medieval Cologne, which itself is basically just the very city centre of Cologne today. However, a lot of digs were made along the roads leading out of Cologne since these were prominent burial sites for rich Romans. These roads follow the old layout until today...

Re: Ancient public library discovered in Germany

#40

Post by pluma » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

zerealshadowban wrote: post #13

pluma wrote: post #8

What the article doesn't really clarify: Cologne was a Roman colony . The full name was Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. "Colonia" means "colony" but it's also the highest tier of recognition Roman cities could have. Cologne was the Eastern-most Roman city of its kind in "Germania". A side-effect of all of this is that you can't really dig anywhere in Cologne without encountering some Roman artifact or ruins (unle…

Since "colonia" originally denoted any Roman outpost established in conquered territory, you can't invoke the word as a singularly significant element of the city name. Mainz was also part of Germania and is much further East. The current extent of modern Köln is much wider than that of the Roman city of 20,000 people, so you'd have to dig in very specific places to find Roman artifacts.

As the other commenter pointed out, the distinction is that citizens of CCAA were citizens of Rome. You're right that Cologne was founded before "colonia" gained its distinctive meaning of status, though, but my statement about Cologne having had that special status (especially compared to e.g. Mainz) is still true nevertheless.

Of course you're also right that modern-day Cologne is bigger than just the Roman center but that's a bit pedantic. The Roman center is of course full of actual ruins (sometimes with medieval ruins on top of them) but artifacts in general (e.g. coins) are still discovered anywhere in the vicinity and especially along the historic roads.

In the Roman city center it's enough of a problem that construction projects tend to be delayed extensively but even outside of it "Roman stuff" is still among the things you might accidentally find by digging, alongside more exciting things like live bombs from WW2 air raids.

EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that there was also a military outpost on the other side of the river in what is now the "Deutz" district.