71–80 of 274 posts
I Hope more and more fragments of anything lost is found. The burn down of Alexandria library was a pity
For some reason, there is a gigantic and ancient monastery on Mount Sinai with a commensurate collection of ancient manuscripts and papyri. Totally coincidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Catherine%27s_Monastery#... How did all that stuff get up there? It was holy angels. #itsalwaysangels
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wtf I’m going to wager that this is a local myth. Just using corpses as fuel feels a bit antithetical to human traditions
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*Also did 19th century Muslim Egyptians really consider mummies part of “their” culture? Or is the idea of “Egypt” also a White imperialist imposition?
Sadly, the article says nothing about how old the fragment is or how it compares to other early copies of the Iliad. Somewhat amazingly, the earliest complete copy of the Iliad is from around 950 C.E. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetus_A
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The trick is to find non-white people so indifferent to their traditions and culture* that they’ll sell it to white supremacists for material gain. *Also did 19th century Muslim Egyptians really consider mummies part of “their” culture? Or is the idea of “Egypt” also a White imperialist imposition?
I don't know why you're being so defensive, this is just history.
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Evidence for this common myth is lacking. https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-great-library-of-a...
People say this without any evidence. This ai-post is just regurgitating hn-thread "received wisdom". The evidence for the existence of a library is thin and hard to piece together, but points to more than a myth. I appreciate that people want real proof of anything, but dumping an ai-slop summary is hardly doing any better than accepting the existence of a large library.
I'm not doubting the library existed and it was destroyed possibly burned more than once but the common trope that Christians did it does not seem to be backed up by history.
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Historical consensus? So the non scientific view? Science is not consensus based.
If you want to know what the science says on some topic, you have exactly two valid options: 1. Become an expert in said topic, reading the broad literature, becoming familiar with points and counterpoints, figuring out how research actually works in the field by contributing some papers of your own, and forming your own personal informed opinion on the preponderance of the evidence. 2. Look at the experts' consensus…
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It was a little before that even. Greek was the language of most fields of learning besides law in the Roman Empire. But the Greeks themselves wrote works on these papyrus scrolls that crumbled fast, so anything not actively used by the Romans was quickly lost. There's a good chance that if the papyrus scrolls in any library (Alexandria or otherwise) weren't being copied regularly they were crumbling even before they…
What’s the evidence Boethius wasn’t Christian? Wikipedia says he was.
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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.
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Evidence for this common myth is lacking. https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-great-library-of-a...
People say this without any evidence. This ai-post is just regurgitating hn-thread "received wisdom". The evidence for the existence of a library is thin and hard to piece together, but points to more than a myth. I appreciate that people want real proof of anything, but dumping an ai-slop summary is hardly doing any better than accepting the existence of a large library.
Yes, you can quickly photograph an entire book with a phone camera. No, you do not need archivists to do it. No, you do not need a scanner. No, you do not need special lighting.
Don't believe me? Pick a book of yours, open it, and take a photo with your phone.