Classics rediscovered
We had mourned the lost of the works of the classic Greek authors: out of the estimated 120 plays by Sophocles, only 7 remained. Damn those bishops and their burnings (Or whoever we blame now)! At any rate, some of those plays, and many others, were thought lost forever have been found (are we so frail and ephemeral?) within the more than 400.000 fragments that comprise the Oxyrhynchus Papyri :
The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence.
Oh, we are so getting a movie out of this!