Excavators find treasure in Egyptian trash heapBackground on the Ancient Lives Project is here.
University experts are trying to match Greek letters to symbols found on ancient fragments of papyri.
By Jill Jensen (mndaily.com)
2012 / 02 / 09
University of Minnesota students can be a part of discovering history by helping researchers decipher Greek characters on 2,000-year-old fragments of ancient papyri discovered in Egypt.
Their participation could also help develop an algorithm to faster assess data in different disciplines — the sole responsibility of the University in the project.
The team is collaborating with the University of Oxford in the Ancient Lives project to translate papyri preserved in Egypt since about the third century B.C.
The damaged fragments are available online for the public to identify and match Greek letters in order to translate works. About 120,000 people participate internationally.
“You don’t need to know Greek,” said Marco Perale, papyrology and Greek language expert.
Only 30 percent of ancient Egyptian works have surfaced, Perale said. Other literature is alluded to in books or poems but wasn’t copied down by scribes and monks.
Lost works, like a book of poetry by Greek poet Sappho, have been deciphered since the excavation of the papyri from a trash heap in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt.
The project has the potential to unveil those treasures as well as develop an algorithm to speed up computers when deciphering data in any discipline.
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