What has been erased visible again: A researcher has discovered the erased traces of a mythological text from antiquity on a parchment from the Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai that was recycled in the Middle Ages, which was previously only indirectly known. It tells of the childhood of the Greek god Dionysus. As the find shows, the pagan text was apparently copied in late antiquity, which was already influenced by Christianity, say the scientists.
Its origins lie in the middle of the 6th century: The St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Egyptian Sinai peninsula is one of the oldest continuously used monasteries in the world. Due to its isolated location, it was never destroyed and so historical treasures could survive in its walls: Several thousand manuscripts from many centuries are stored in the monastery library. Some are doubly exciting specimens – so-called palimpsests. It is recycled parchment that was re-inscribed in the Middle Ages after older texts had been erased. As part of the Sinai Palimpsests Project, scientists have been trying for a number of years to use modern technology to make still existing traces of the overwritten texts legible. They have already made some exciting finds.
Hidden writing appears
The latest discovery is now thanks to Giulia Rossetto from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). As part of her doctoral thesis, she investigated a fragmentary parchment that had been rewritten by Christian monks in the 10th century. Using multispectral photography and subsequent computer-aided image analysis, Rossetto was finally able to elicit its secrets from the manuscript: Hidden characters became visible and the scientist was finally able to decipher the erased writing on the remains of parchment.
As the Austrian Academy of Sciences reports, an ancient scholarly dream came true: passages of a lost text from antiquity emerged that goes back to Homer’s time. “It is a poetic text in hexameters, the classic meter of epic poetry. This came from an epic that originally probably comprised 24 books, and the existence of which has so far only been indirectly proven, ”says Rossetto.
Lost Dionysus story
The content of the discovered text is about the Greek god of wine Dionysus and his adversaries, reports the scientist: Toys and gifts are mentioned that are used by the titans to distract the child god. “These details were previously only known from indirect transmission, that is, from quotations in other works. Now, for the first time, we have the original text to which these quotations go back, ”says the scientific director of the Sinai Palimpsest Project Claudia Rapp from the University of Vienna.
As the OeAW reports, the assessment of the writing style shows that the ancient text that was later erased was copied in Egypt in the 5th or 6th century. “In terms of cultural history, this discovery is of great interest because it shows that there was still an active interest in religious texts from pagan antiquity in Egypt at that time – that is, at a time when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself firmly in the Roman Empire”, explains Rapp.
Later that was obviously no longer the case. Because in the centuries that followed, the text was erased from the parchment so that the precious material could be used again. In the early 10th century it was then rewritten by Arabic-speaking monks with biographies of saints in the Christian monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem. The Palimpsests were thus a form of mediaeval recycling, writes the OeAW.
Source: Austrian Academy of Sciences