It's amazing how archeologists still sometimes find bits and pieces of previously undiscovered material. It's also suspenseful--what will they find next?
Thanks for mentioning this. It's not the sort of thing that gets a lot of news coverage.
There is relatively new information available about some of these shards in Egypt due to excavations started in 2005. This is not one of those newly excavated / discovered shards.
Since I posted my attempted translation, I have bought a used copy of "The Roman Army: 34 BC - AD 337" by Brian Campbell, the 1994 version, which includes his translation of this shard. I'll be posting his version (my gist is correct, but I have errors) in an upcoming post.
If I am reading the references correctly, information about this shard was first published by Guéraud, Octave in 1942 in the Bulletin de l‘Institut français d‘archéologie orientale (BIFAO) 41 (1942), p. 153-155 no. 1.
The really new thing is that hundreds of these pottery shards and papyrus fragments are now available for free on line. That's what is relatively new, I think. But most do not have free translations available online, and the ones available are not necessarily in English. In fact, it seems likely that most don't have any translations available at all.
In which case, you’re performing a valuable service by translating them.
It sometimes takes quite a while for even something as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls translations to be available to the public. I imagine individual fragments command far less attention.
When I was in college, if I recall correctly, a complete copy of Menander’s Dyskolos, and a translation followed fairly quickly. But there was a lot of excitement about that because it was the only surviving example of Greek New Comedy.
Is this a relatively recent discovery?
It's amazing how archeologists still sometimes find bits and pieces of previously undiscovered material. It's also suspenseful--what will they find next?
Thanks for mentioning this. It's not the sort of thing that gets a lot of news coverage.
There is relatively new information available about some of these shards in Egypt due to excavations started in 2005. This is not one of those newly excavated / discovered shards.
Since I posted my attempted translation, I have bought a used copy of "The Roman Army: 34 BC - AD 337" by Brian Campbell, the 1994 version, which includes his translation of this shard. I'll be posting his version (my gist is correct, but I have errors) in an upcoming post.
If I am reading the references correctly, information about this shard was first published by Guéraud, Octave in 1942 in the Bulletin de l‘Institut français d‘archéologie orientale (BIFAO) 41 (1942), p. 153-155 no. 1.
The really new thing is that hundreds of these pottery shards and papyrus fragments are now available for free on line. That's what is relatively new, I think. But most do not have free translations available online, and the ones available are not necessarily in English. In fact, it seems likely that most don't have any translations available at all.
In which case, you’re performing a valuable service by translating them.
It sometimes takes quite a while for even something as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls translations to be available to the public. I imagine individual fragments command far less attention.
When I was in college, if I recall correctly, a complete copy of Menander’s Dyskolos, and a translation followed fairly quickly. But there was a lot of excitement about that because it was the only surviving example of Greek New Comedy.