2,000 Year Old Library Discovered at Ancient City of Stratonikeia in Turkey (Nisha Zahid, Greek Reporter).
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a rare Greco-Roman library in the ancient Greek city of Stratonikeia (Greek: Στρατoνικεια) in southwest Turkey, revealing new insights into the architectural and cultural legacy of one of antiquity’s largest marble cities.Spoiler: all the books were checked out. And are overdue. But there are some inscriptions that name the architect who designed it. And it's nice to have the floor plan of a substantial Greco-Roman-era library.[...]
The Forgotten Archive of the Scribe of the Temple of Crocodile God in Egypt is Recovered, Containing Sent and Received Letters and Questions to the Oracle (Guillermo Carvajal, LBV).
Carolin Arlt holds a doctorate in Egyptology. After studying Egyptology, Ancient History, and Classical Archaeology at the Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg (JMU), she earned her doctorate at the same institution. She later worked at universities in Cologne, Berkeley, and Jerusalem before returning to JMU in 2009 as a researcher on a project focused on a temple in Egypt’s Fayum region.Unfortunately, these documents were looted from said temple (or somewhere) in the nineteenth century, so their archaeological context is lost. But I suppose we're lucky to have them at all.She is now starting a new research project based on another temple in Fayum, a Ptolemaic archive from the temple of Soknopaiu Nesos. Her research will focus on 75 documents from this temple, written on papyrus in Demotic over 2,200 years ago by Tesenuphis, son of Marres, who referred to himself as the “scribe of the priests.”
Neither story is directly relevant to ancient Judaism. But I offer them as a reminder that there are still plenty of ancient archives waiting to be uncovered, some even with texts still in them.
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