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Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

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Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#61

Post by wavefunction »

krapp wrote: post #38
wavefunction wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably held a bunch of relatively boring local administrative records as far as "documents found only in the Library of Alexandria" from what I've read. Of course some scholars of the boring administrative history of the world would be thrilled though.

As far as I know the vast majority of cuneiform we have is essentially administrative records, tax record and receipts. And homework. That's the stuff that tells us how societies and cultures really worked.

I don't discount the scholarly value of these works as you note. They provide a very important insight into these early and semi-documented societies but they don't have a visceral impact for the public like "The Hidden Mysteries of Things Previously Unknown" we accord to the Library of Alexandria in popular acclaim

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#62

Post by CamelCaseCondo »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #54

It’s heartbreaking to think of what treasures were lost when they were using mummies as locomotive fuel in the 19th century.

Elliott, Chris (2017). "Bandages, Bitumen, Bodies and Business – Egyptian mummies as raw materials". Aegyptiaca (1): 40–46.

https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/aegyp/articl...

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#63

Post by TFNA »

wavefunction wrote: post #34
anon291 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that surprising. The earliest complete copies of many ancient texts is similarly dated. For example, the earliest copy of the Rg Veda is dated to about that age as well. It's hard to keep complete copies of big books.

As well, both the Iliad and Vedas are originally oral traditions. Likely there were different versions and different parts of the stories were emphasized to appeal to their audiences and local tastes and current events. Something that can still be apparent in historical texts but probably greatly reduced by the function of printed versions presenting a singular "authoritative version."

Only in the beginning, in the wake of the Greek Bronze Age dark age, was Homeric epic an improvised oral tradition that could be tailored to a listening audience’s preferences. By fifth-century Athens, writers depict the text as already definite, composed by one guy named Homer (instead of a long series of anonymous bards). Greeks may still have been learning and passing on Homer orally, but it was as a text that one received and was expected to relay onward faithfully.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#64

Post by rwmj »

shevy-java wrote: post #60

That's a head scratcher. Why did the person have that fragment? Was it like a comic book or something?

Imagine that paper is insanely expensive because it is very labour-intensive to make. People reused paper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest). Cloth is also insanely expensive. People wore clothes long after we'd consider them worn out.

Your job is to wrap mummies, so you use and reuse whatever is available, scraps of completely worn out clothing, or in this case some scraps of paper that happen to have writing on them. Which you cannot read because literacy rates are fairly low, especially amongst the poor working class.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#65

Post by krapp »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #55
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #54

It’s heartbreaking to think of what treasures were lost when they were using mummies as locomotive fuel in the 19th century.

wtf I’m going to wager that this is a local myth. Just using corpses as fuel feels a bit antithetical to human traditions

[flagged]

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#66

Post by krapp »

wavefunction wrote: post #61
krapp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know the vast majority of cuneiform we have is essentially administrative records, tax record and receipts. And homework. That's the stuff that tells us how societies and cultures really worked.

I don't discount the scholarly value of these works as you note. They provide a very important insight into these early and semi-documented societies but they don't have a visceral impact for the public like "The Hidden Mysteries of Things Previously Unknown" we accord to the Library of Alexandria in popular acclaim

True, but sometimes something like the complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir[0] reaches meme status.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#67

Post by efavdb »

TFNA wrote: post #63
wavefunction wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well, both the Iliad and Vedas are originally oral traditions. Likely there were different versions and different parts of the stories were emphasized to appeal to their audiences and local tastes and current events. Something that can still be apparent in historical texts but probably greatly reduced by the function of printed versions presenting a singular "authoritative version."

Only in the beginning, in the wake of the Greek Bronze Age dark age, was Homeric epic an improvised oral tradition that could be tailored to a listening audience’s preferences. By fifth-century Athens, writers depict the text as already definite, composed by one guy named Homer (instead of a long series of anonymous bards). Greeks may still have been learning and passing on Homer orally, but it was as a text that one…

Alexander the Great (died 323 bc) famously kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#70

Post by jaldhar »

oersted wrote: post #56
z3phyr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vedas are surprisingly uniform across a very long time period.

It's likely that there have been bottlenecks, where a single written version became the main common ancestor to copy from. Long after the oral tradition died down and other written versions were lost. Or because some patron decided to fund the dissemination of a particular copy, like Guttemberg or King James, or the Toledo School of Translators. Or because a particular heir of the oral tradition wrote it down, like H…

What you are saying is generally true (and certainly true for many Indian texts), but the oral tradition of the Vedas really is old. Having been brought up in the West I only learned enough for daily and occasional rituals. My guru taught me without looking at a book and although I have such books now I bought them for curiosity only; if I had a question about recitation it would not occur to me to consult them. My son has learned the same way.
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