The breakthrough is being
touted as the “classical equivalent of finding the Holy Grail.” Some are saying
it will change the way we look at the world. One thing is certain: The largest
cache of papyri ever excavated just became much more readable. Using imaging
technology developed and utilized by BYU scholars, researchers are now able
to finally read much of the Oxyrhynchus papyri that were previously thought
to be blackened beyond legibility.
Oxyrhynchus was an ancient
Greco-Roman city located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo. For about
1,000 years its inhabitants used a garbage dump just outside the city. As
providence would have it, this garbage dump happened to be situated perfectly
above the flood plain of the Nile — creating a safe place for preservation.
The city's inhabitants used the dump to dispose
of everything from poetry to plays to tax receipts, personal letters to philosophy.
The dump itself
was excavated toward the end of the 19th Century,
exposing the largest cache of papyri ever found in a single
location. Some of the more readable pieces have been long since
deciphered. These include plays by Menander, poems of Pindar,
fragments of Sappho and Alcaeus, and the oldest and most complete
diagrams from Euclid's Elements, to name a few.
Of the Christian texts found at Oxyrhynchus, fragments of the
Gospel of Thomas probably dating from the 2nd or
3rd century AD have been found, the Gospel according
to the Hebrews (3rd century AD); The Shepherd of Hermas (3rd
or 4th century), and a work of Irenaeus from the
3rd century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus).
But as BYU teams up with
researchers from around the globe using multispectral imaging (MSI), the most
exciting discoveries in the Oxyrhynchus papyri are almost certainly still
to come.
The Possibilities
Some are predicting a "second
Renaissance" because of the use of MSI on the papyrus fragments, and
others are claiming that deciphering the Oxyrhynchus papyri might increase
the existing body of classical Greek and Roman work by up to 20 percent.
And the
early results truly are stunning. The Online
Independent, a publication of the United Kingdom, reported
that during a period of four days in April, researchers were
able to decipher a writing
by Sophocles, Euripedes, Hesiod and other literary giants of
the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they
are likely to find lost Christian gospels the originals of which
were written around the time of the earliest books of the New
Testament.
The Independent goes
on to report why the breakthrough with the Oxyrhynchus papyri is creating
such excitement:
Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University
of Oxford, described the new works as “central texts which scholars have been
speculating about for centuries.”
Professor Richard Janko, a leading
British scholar, formerly of University College London, now head of classics
at the University of Michigan, said: “Normally we are lucky to get one such
find per decade.” One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the
poet Archilocos, of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as
“invaluable” by Dr. Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics
campaign.
"The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance, especially now that it can be read
fully and relatively quickly," said the Oxford academic directing the research,
Dr. Dirk Obbink. "The material will shed light on virtually every aspect
of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical
world as a whole."
Dr. Roger McFarlane (director
of the earlier BYU Herculaneum project to decipher the scrolls in
Julius Caesar's father-in-law's partially excavated library), suggests
a more measured level of excitement. "With about 400,000 fragments to examine,
I think we could very well be at this for five to ten years." But McFarlane
was quick to follow up with, "There's no doubt that when the Oxyrhynchus
results are finally published that our knowledge of Greek literature will
be vastly expanded. No doubt. It is a big step forward to be able to read
the Oxyrhynchus papyri."
The Fragments
No excavation is perfect.
In the earlier Herculaneum project, many scrolls were so charred and looked
so damaged that they were actually thrown away before the project got started.
The Oxyrhynchus papyrus
fragments face different problems. Dr. McFarlane explained that a lot of
the Oxyrhynchus papyri have a sort of opaque film over them. The coating,
which interferes with the ability to read the papyri, is thought to be some
kind of plaster or mud — something once liquid that is now dried. One option
to make the papyri readable is to remove that coating, and researchers have
been trying to do that for years. The problem with the removal process is
that in rubbing off the coating, the ink sometimes goes with it. The strong
preference, of course, is to leave the surface as untouched as possible.
Although the
papyri are in poor condition, faint lines of Greek and Latin text
can still be seen on the brittle surface (from the Herculaneum
project). Photo by Mark Philbrick, courtesy of Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, Italy
And MSI allows for exactly
that. BYU was first invited by Dr. Dirk Obbink, the curator of the Oxyrhynchus
collection (which is housed in Oxford’s Sackler Library), to do exploratory
work on the papyri fragments. They had good initial success. Such success
in fact, that Dr. Obbink invited BYU researchers back this summer for a more
systematic approach to imaging and researching the papyri.
BYU and the Technology
Team
The text-imaging technology,
called multispectral imaging (MSI), was born of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
technology, which was created to analyze surfaces of planets and moons throughout
the solar system. Dr. Greg Bearman, a physicist and member of that team,
had the pioneering idea to apply similar technology to ancient texts.
From that initial idea,
Dr. Gene Ware, now professor emeritus of engineering at BYU, took the idea
and carried it forth into a reality by creating the first multispectral imaging
system.
There are several MSI cameras
now in existence. One of these cameras is in the care of Steven and Susan
Booras, a couple who worked extensively on the BYU Herculaneum project, living
in Naples for almost a year and a half as they did so. I spent part of an
afternoon this past week with the Boorases in their home, finding out how
this imaging is done. Steven is also the technical director of operations
for the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts
at BYU, and he ended our interview with a humble, "I'm just a techno-guy who take pictures."
He wears his
humility well, but the fact is, Ware's MSI technology and what
Steven and Susan Booras and their team do to papyrus to make it
legible is extraordinary. They have been called heroes by the
press. They elicited a hearty “Go Mormons!” in a recent posting
on the Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org/2005/04/18/oxyrhynchus%20papyrii%20deciphered/).
Despite their humility, however, it is quickly apparent that Steven
and Susan Booras and other BYU researchers are doing anything
but simply taking pictures.
How MSI works
Steven Booras described MSI technology
this way:
We use a specially designed digital camera that has a broad
response in the light spectrum — one that goes from about 400 nanometers to
about 1,100 nanometers. (A regular camera goes from about 400-700nm.) Because
ours goes to one micron or more, it allows you to respond that far into the
infrared. A special set of 8-12 band-pass filters on a wheel are also attached
to the camera. The filters don't allow the whole light spectrum to
pass through, just a certain wavelength. So one filter will allow 400 nm,
one 500 nm, another 550 nm, all the way out to 1,000 nm or 1,050 nm.
All elements have their own unique light-emitting signature.
So even though you have a papyrus that's burned black with black ink on it,
that papyrus still has a chemical element of its own and the ink has an element
of its own; each emits a different wavelength of light. Even though the contrast
between the two is very narrow — beyond what the light spectrum the human
eye or even a regular camera can pick up — certain filters of ours will pick
it up.
So we go out and try to find where that contrast shows up.
We find the place where the ink stands out and the black papyrus
drops away. That's what multispectral imaging does.
Steven Booras,
Daniel Oswald, and Susan Booras of BYU-FARMS use MSI to read previously
indecipherable text. Photo
by Mark Philbrick, courtesy of Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, Italy
One thing is certain about
Steven and Susan Booras: They are absolutely passionate not only about the
product, but the process itself. Susan said of their year and a half working
in Italy on the earlier Herculaneum project, “You’re looking at something
so ancient. It looks like burned newspaper. You put it under the camera
and turn the computer on, and voila. It is amazing.” With all of the press
MSI and the Oxyrhynchus papyri has stirred up, the world seems to agree.
From Light to Enlightenment
A common thread appeared
with every researcher I interviewed: Quickly the hype and the media frenzy
questions dropped away, and we began discussing the steady passion these people
have for their work. Dr. Ware good-naturedly rattled off dozens of ancient
Mayan murals he has helped to decipher and work he has done at the Vatican
and for the Smithsonian; Dr. McFarlane spoke to me from Italy — where he is
currently working with BYU students on another imaging project — about the
ostraca (pottery fragments used when other writing material was scarce) he
helped decipher at the Petrie Museum in London; and it was obvious the Boorases
cared deeply about the Herculaneum project and the people they met there.
It is hard to quantify the
potential effect of being able to read the Oxyrhyncus papyri. And we have
that potential because in the unlikeliest of places, even in garbage heaps,
even on blackened papyri, passionate and dedicated BYU researchers and others
see possibility. And these researchers are willing to find that place where
ink emits a certain wavelength of light and the papyrus drops away.
To stay tuned to upcoming
finds and progress on the Oxyrhynchus project, you can find great
information at Dr. Obbink's website: http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/index.html .
Read the full text of the Online Independent story here:
(http://www.realopinion.com/realboards/showthread.php?p=2556 ).
