Post by albanesehoney on Dec 1, 2007 22:01:11 GMT -5
A few more words about your links Nik....
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060606-greek-scroll.html
ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-01-27.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derveni_Papyrus
www.brynmawr.edu/classics/redmonds/csts212w4.html
[edit] Recent reading
The text was not officially published for forty-four years after its discovery (though three partial editions were published). According to the publisher A. L. Pierris, Kyriakos Tsantanoglou, professor emeritus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki delayed its publication. A team of experts was assembled in autumn of 2005 led by A. L. Pierris of the Institute for Philosophical studies, Dirk Obbink, director of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus project at the University of Oxford, with the help of modern multispectral imaging techniques by Roger Macfarlane and Gene Ware of Brigham Young University to attempt a better approach to the edition of a difficult text. Meanwhile, the papyrus has at last been published by scholars from Thessaloniki (Tsantsanoglou et al., below), in an edition which lacks an apparatus criticus to record the contributions of various scholars but at least provides a complete text of the papyrus based on autopsy of the fragments, with photographs and translation, after so long a wait. More work clearly remains to be done (see Janko 2006, below).
epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/search_main.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Macedonians
The Derveni Papyrus (PDerveni)
The Derveni Papyrus
In 1997 I was asked to give a lecture on the Derveni papyrus, a mysterious text from northern Greece copied in the fourth century B.C.E. that was still not properly published. This is the oldest surviving European manuscript. A new English translation of it by Andr¨¦ Laks and Glenn Most was about to appear. I had no theory to offer and was unhappy to be required to speak on this topic, but soon found that the new material being published furnished precious clues to what the papyrus was. Most of it is an allegorical interpretation of a scandalous Orphic poem about the origins of the world. This poem, which speaks of Zeus dethroning his father and things even worse from any moral perspective, is reinterpreted as an account of cosmogony in terms of the latest Presocratic physics. Other parts of the text show that the author was concerned to argue that taking religious texts and rituals literally is a danger to one's faith; interpretation, using allegory and etymology, is essential.
In an article written in a burst of creativity over just two or three weeks, I was able to show that the interpreter was very close indeed in thought to the Presocratic philosopher Diogenes of Apollonia, whose eccentric beliefs are attributed to Socrates in Aristophanes' Clouds. However, in the end I concluded that the author was the 'atheist' poet and sophist Diagoras of Melos, whom the Athenians sentenced to death in 415-414 B.C.E. for mocking the Eleusinian mysteries. Diagoras is known to have modified the names of the gods in arguing about their nature; Aristophanes labelled Socrates 'the Melian' in a reference to this particular 'heretic', who taught that Zeus had been displaced by Dinos, that is the Vortex or Air. Thinkers such as he thought that god was a material principle, but also Mind, that permeates everything. However, the Athenians did not distinguish belief in new gods from belief in no gods at all, and in a series of trials Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras and Socrates were all condemned for impiety.
About the find
In 1962 archaeologists excavated a site called ¦«¦Å¦Ñ¦Âέ¦Í¦É, a few miles from Salonika. The site contained a number of tombs, some with funeral goods, belonging to members of the military class. The site cannot be more recent that 300 BC.
In the remains of the funeral pyre in tomb A, the top part of a rolled-up papyrus roll was found, completely charred. This came apart into more than 200 fragments, which contained more than 24 columns of text, with a blank sheet of papyrus at the end (about 16cm wide).
The original roll seems to have been around 20 cm high, of which around 7-8 cms now survives. Of each column, around 15 lines survives. Each line contains 30-45 letters, as the text is written out to the full length of the hexameters, and words are divided only in the case of preverbs. Many of the fragments preserve the final letters of the lines of one column and the initial ones of the lines of the next, so the order of the columns is certain for most of the text.
The script is 4th century, and has been assigned to 340-320 BC by Tsantsanoglou and Parassoglou (1988). There are scribal variations which seem to be the result of sharpening the quill, rather than changing it.
Paragraphoi are present and used to indicate quotations. They are also used, accompanied by a dash, for punctuation at the end of a period. Iota mutum is indicated, and there is almost always assimilation as is usual at this period.
Publication history
It seems extraordinary to this layman, but apparently the text has still to be published! * Between 1962 and 1982 no text was available to anyone, which suggests very strongly personal selfishness by certain people. In 1982 an unauthorised anonymous publication of a transcription took place (in Zeitschrift f¨¹r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 47, 1982, p.300 ff) which caused "strained relations within the scholarly community" but allowed work to begin. It is very difficult for a layman like myself to understand just how people whose salaries are paid by the state in order to promote learning end up in a situation where they prevent each other from accessing a new find, if that is what has truly happened. R. Janko has prepared a new unauthorised text based on information disclosed down the years since (ZPE 141, 2002, 1-62).
English translations do exist, and one is published in Laks and Most, and another in Janko in CP 96. Others, unpublished, are by R. Lamberton, D. Obbink, and a French translation by J. Bollack.
Content
The manuscript contains a previously unknown text which quotes lines from a poem about the gods, and also pieces of Heraclitus. It has been described as a commentary on an Orphic theogony, and the name of Orpheus is mentioned.
www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/derveni.htm
More on the Int'l University community's criticism of the handling and secrecy of the discovery of this papyri.
osdir.com/ml/education.publications.bryn-mawr-classical-review/2006-11/msg00000.html?rfp=dta
As for the translation, whose only aim is to demonstrate how the
editors understand their text, J. states that it "accurately renders
the Greek", but he immediately afterwards remarks that "there is
much[!] that makes little sense"; this is due, of course, to our not
having accepted his emendations and supplements. He cites as an example
our translation of col. 12,3-10, where he believes that "the logic and
sequence seem crazy", adding in a footnote that he "cannot make head or
tail of the logic of the passage" as explained in the commentary.
(Others, Betegh and Jourdan among them, had no difficulty with our
supplement.) Our commentary seems clear enough, but let us be more
detailed. In this passage the author wishes to prove that, in the
Orphic verse which he cites in col. 12,2, "Olympus" = "time". He does
not take into consideration that "Olympus" may refer to a mountain but
endeavors to prove that it cannot mean "sky", as some think. His
argument runs as follows: (a) One may not say that the sky is long,
though one may say that it is broad (J.'s translations "longer" and
"broader" are wrong; cf. Smyth, 1080, on double comparison). (b) One
may say that time is long. (c) Orpheus uses the expression "broad sky"
when talking about the sky, and the expression "long Olympus" when
talking about "Olympus". (d) Since the epithet "long" can only be
applied to time and to Olympus (the expression "long sky" being
impossible), by saying "Olympus" Orpheus can only mean "time", i.e.
"[long] Olympus" = "[long] time". To put it inversely, by saying
"Olympus" Orpheus cannot mean "sky", for thus we would be confronted
with the equation "[broad] sky" (a possible expression) = "[broad]
Olympus" (an impossible expression). Adopting J.'s supplement and
translation (if we understand the latter correctly), we must needs then
saddle Orpheus with the formula "broad Olympus", which no epic poet
except Quintus Smyrnaeus ever used. The reasoning employed by the
Derveni author is similar to that used by ancient scholiasts to prove
that in some Homeric passages (cf. the scholia on Iliad 1,402 and
15,21) "long Olympus" must refer to a mountain and cannot refer to the
sky, since the latter is called "broad", i.e. "broad sky", not "broad
Olympus".
J. is quite right in stating that misidentification of the subject in
col. 17 may cause grave problems. He disagrees with our choice of
subjects and offers a translation which contains the startling sentence
"Why (Zeus) was called 'Air' has been revealed earlier". It would
indeed be a revelation, had Orpheus (or anyone else, for that matter)called Zeus "Air". (J. has momentarily forgotten that the exactopposite holds true.) It is far more logical to translate "why (air)was called air", and we have a long discussion on this, pp. 218-\
What is the word for air in Greek?
The University of Chicago Press
The Derveni Papyrus ("Diagoras of Melos, Apopyrgizontes Logoi?"): A New Translation
Richard Janko
Classical Philology, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 1-32
This article consists of 32 page(s).
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060606-greek-scroll.html
ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2005/2005-01-27.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derveni_Papyrus
www.brynmawr.edu/classics/redmonds/csts212w4.html
[edit] Recent reading
The text was not officially published for forty-four years after its discovery (though three partial editions were published). According to the publisher A. L. Pierris, Kyriakos Tsantanoglou, professor emeritus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki delayed its publication. A team of experts was assembled in autumn of 2005 led by A. L. Pierris of the Institute for Philosophical studies, Dirk Obbink, director of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus project at the University of Oxford, with the help of modern multispectral imaging techniques by Roger Macfarlane and Gene Ware of Brigham Young University to attempt a better approach to the edition of a difficult text. Meanwhile, the papyrus has at last been published by scholars from Thessaloniki (Tsantsanoglou et al., below), in an edition which lacks an apparatus criticus to record the contributions of various scholars but at least provides a complete text of the papyrus based on autopsy of the fragments, with photographs and translation, after so long a wait. More work clearly remains to be done (see Janko 2006, below).
epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/search_main.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Macedonians
The Derveni Papyrus (PDerveni)
The Derveni Papyrus
In 1997 I was asked to give a lecture on the Derveni papyrus, a mysterious text from northern Greece copied in the fourth century B.C.E. that was still not properly published. This is the oldest surviving European manuscript. A new English translation of it by Andr¨¦ Laks and Glenn Most was about to appear. I had no theory to offer and was unhappy to be required to speak on this topic, but soon found that the new material being published furnished precious clues to what the papyrus was. Most of it is an allegorical interpretation of a scandalous Orphic poem about the origins of the world. This poem, which speaks of Zeus dethroning his father and things even worse from any moral perspective, is reinterpreted as an account of cosmogony in terms of the latest Presocratic physics. Other parts of the text show that the author was concerned to argue that taking religious texts and rituals literally is a danger to one's faith; interpretation, using allegory and etymology, is essential.
In an article written in a burst of creativity over just two or three weeks, I was able to show that the interpreter was very close indeed in thought to the Presocratic philosopher Diogenes of Apollonia, whose eccentric beliefs are attributed to Socrates in Aristophanes' Clouds. However, in the end I concluded that the author was the 'atheist' poet and sophist Diagoras of Melos, whom the Athenians sentenced to death in 415-414 B.C.E. for mocking the Eleusinian mysteries. Diagoras is known to have modified the names of the gods in arguing about their nature; Aristophanes labelled Socrates 'the Melian' in a reference to this particular 'heretic', who taught that Zeus had been displaced by Dinos, that is the Vortex or Air. Thinkers such as he thought that god was a material principle, but also Mind, that permeates everything. However, the Athenians did not distinguish belief in new gods from belief in no gods at all, and in a series of trials Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras and Socrates were all condemned for impiety.
About the find
In 1962 archaeologists excavated a site called ¦«¦Å¦Ñ¦Âέ¦Í¦É, a few miles from Salonika. The site contained a number of tombs, some with funeral goods, belonging to members of the military class. The site cannot be more recent that 300 BC.
In the remains of the funeral pyre in tomb A, the top part of a rolled-up papyrus roll was found, completely charred. This came apart into more than 200 fragments, which contained more than 24 columns of text, with a blank sheet of papyrus at the end (about 16cm wide).
The original roll seems to have been around 20 cm high, of which around 7-8 cms now survives. Of each column, around 15 lines survives. Each line contains 30-45 letters, as the text is written out to the full length of the hexameters, and words are divided only in the case of preverbs. Many of the fragments preserve the final letters of the lines of one column and the initial ones of the lines of the next, so the order of the columns is certain for most of the text.
The script is 4th century, and has been assigned to 340-320 BC by Tsantsanoglou and Parassoglou (1988). There are scribal variations which seem to be the result of sharpening the quill, rather than changing it.
Paragraphoi are present and used to indicate quotations. They are also used, accompanied by a dash, for punctuation at the end of a period. Iota mutum is indicated, and there is almost always assimilation as is usual at this period.
Publication history
It seems extraordinary to this layman, but apparently the text has still to be published! * Between 1962 and 1982 no text was available to anyone, which suggests very strongly personal selfishness by certain people. In 1982 an unauthorised anonymous publication of a transcription took place (in Zeitschrift f¨¹r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 47, 1982, p.300 ff) which caused "strained relations within the scholarly community" but allowed work to begin. It is very difficult for a layman like myself to understand just how people whose salaries are paid by the state in order to promote learning end up in a situation where they prevent each other from accessing a new find, if that is what has truly happened. R. Janko has prepared a new unauthorised text based on information disclosed down the years since (ZPE 141, 2002, 1-62).
English translations do exist, and one is published in Laks and Most, and another in Janko in CP 96. Others, unpublished, are by R. Lamberton, D. Obbink, and a French translation by J. Bollack.
Content
The manuscript contains a previously unknown text which quotes lines from a poem about the gods, and also pieces of Heraclitus. It has been described as a commentary on an Orphic theogony, and the name of Orpheus is mentioned.
www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/derveni.htm
More on the Int'l University community's criticism of the handling and secrecy of the discovery of this papyri.
osdir.com/ml/education.publications.bryn-mawr-classical-review/2006-11/msg00000.html?rfp=dta
As for the translation, whose only aim is to demonstrate how the
editors understand their text, J. states that it "accurately renders
the Greek", but he immediately afterwards remarks that "there is
much[!] that makes little sense"; this is due, of course, to our not
having accepted his emendations and supplements. He cites as an example
our translation of col. 12,3-10, where he believes that "the logic and
sequence seem crazy", adding in a footnote that he "cannot make head or
tail of the logic of the passage" as explained in the commentary.
(Others, Betegh and Jourdan among them, had no difficulty with our
supplement.) Our commentary seems clear enough, but let us be more
detailed. In this passage the author wishes to prove that, in the
Orphic verse which he cites in col. 12,2, "Olympus" = "time". He does
not take into consideration that "Olympus" may refer to a mountain but
endeavors to prove that it cannot mean "sky", as some think. His
argument runs as follows: (a) One may not say that the sky is long,
though one may say that it is broad (J.'s translations "longer" and
"broader" are wrong; cf. Smyth, 1080, on double comparison). (b) One
may say that time is long. (c) Orpheus uses the expression "broad sky"
when talking about the sky, and the expression "long Olympus" when
talking about "Olympus". (d) Since the epithet "long" can only be
applied to time and to Olympus (the expression "long sky" being
impossible), by saying "Olympus" Orpheus can only mean "time", i.e.
"[long] Olympus" = "[long] time". To put it inversely, by saying
"Olympus" Orpheus cannot mean "sky", for thus we would be confronted
with the equation "[broad] sky" (a possible expression) = "[broad]
Olympus" (an impossible expression). Adopting J.'s supplement and
translation (if we understand the latter correctly), we must needs then
saddle Orpheus with the formula "broad Olympus", which no epic poet
except Quintus Smyrnaeus ever used. The reasoning employed by the
Derveni author is similar to that used by ancient scholiasts to prove
that in some Homeric passages (cf. the scholia on Iliad 1,402 and
15,21) "long Olympus" must refer to a mountain and cannot refer to the
sky, since the latter is called "broad", i.e. "broad sky", not "broad
Olympus".
J. is quite right in stating that misidentification of the subject in
col. 17 may cause grave problems. He disagrees with our choice of
subjects and offers a translation which contains the startling sentence
"Why (Zeus) was called 'Air' has been revealed earlier". It would
indeed be a revelation, had Orpheus (or anyone else, for that matter)called Zeus "Air". (J. has momentarily forgotten that the exactopposite holds true.) It is far more logical to translate "why (air)was called air", and we have a long discussion on this, pp. 218-\
What is the word for air in Greek?
The University of Chicago Press
The Derveni Papyrus ("Diagoras of Melos, Apopyrgizontes Logoi?"): A New Translation
Richard Janko
Classical Philology, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 1-32
This article consists of 32 page(s).