Worth mentioning Gene Wolfe’s superb Latro books (https://www.goodreads.com/series/49453-latro)
I think the premise for the books is that the story is found on ancient papyrus.
Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
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Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#82Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only because humidity is measured relative to the vapor pressure at a given temperature. It only matters for preservation when humidity reaches 100%.
Is this true? Paper (and I assume papyrus) expands and contracts with varying humidity even below the saturation point, and this motion embrittles and cracks it, no? So consistent humidity is key, and "consistently dry" is much more achievable than "consistently at an arbitrary other point."
Your intuition is more correct: it is not true. The relative humidity of the air matters below 100% as well. I think the parent commenter mistakenly assumed that only "condensation" matters, but materials will absorb moisture from the air even if the water doesn't condense. Entropy drives the dispersion of moisture, and some materials are "hygroscopic", meaning they don't merely reach equilibrium with the air, but actually concentrate moisture from the air and get significantly more wet than the air which feeds it water.
Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If you are not in the field, consensus is often almost impossible to figure out. Remember what gets published is things that are controversial. Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it. Thus, if you're searching for something, you may not actually find the consensus if you're looking, and so the study is hard when you're not already an expert.
> Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it.
Not really; generally consensus ideas will be mentioned in passing while discussing something else. You can get a strong sense of the consensus that way.
For example, I bought several textbooks on early Mesopotamian history, which taught me that Marxism enjoys a strong consensus in that field. And it's not even relevant to the field!
Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#85Now what would be great is if they found a complete Telegony- the ostensible "third book" of the Iliad trilogy.
Recency bias probably colors my perception but I really enjoyed Stephen Fry's audiobook performance of his four book series on Greek and Roman myths, mostly dramatized by him but asides with etymology, history and other source references so it's a synthesis of many works into one coherent narrative, with about the last 45 minutes dedicated to what happened to Aeneas and the Telegony, for anyone else new to this, Telegonus was son of Odysseus via Circe.
Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#86Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#87Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
wtf I’m going to wager that this is a local myth. Just using corpses as fuel feels a bit antithetical to human traditions
They were actually eaten (in the early modern era) or ground up for paint.
Most commonly used for paint or to colour bricks, yes. It's disgusting, but the British and Italians didn't really care at that point because anthropology and archaeology were not respected professions in the 1820s. They were just hobbies of wealthy gentlemen who liked to travel.
Most disturbing is that apparently people kept using them for paint up until the last supplier ran out of mummies sometime around 1960. Yes. 1960.
Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#89In case anyone doesn't know, Oxyrhynchus is a major source of archaeological discoveries. Particularly ancient (Ptolemaic/Roman Egypt) papyrus fragments recovered from an ancient landfill on the outskirts of the city. Notably some of the earliest-known Christian textual artefacts were found there (the actual earliest fragments came from elsewhere in Egypt). It turns out that Egypt's hot and dry climate provides the p…
One of the texts found in Oxyrhynchus is the oldest extant Western martial arts treatise: https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyrus_(P.Oxy.III.4...
Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
We're specifically talking about the British Empire and its attitude towards colonized people and cultures. I'm sure that Muslim Egyptians had their own prejudice, but Muslim Egyptian prejudice didn't inform British people's alienation and dehumanization of non-white cultures whereas white supremacy did. They didn't use mummies for firewood, to garnish their soup or grind them into paint because Egyptian Muslims cons…
It is as a student of history that the more I learn, the more I realize that The "White people did colonialism and everyone was sad" attitude I grew up with is simplistic when not flat out wrong. Egyptians (who were technically not part of the British Empire) were willing participants in the mummy trade. To ignore that is also dehumanizing.