I would probably only trade 7 but....good ideas 🖕🤣

Exactly how many King Tut's Tombs do you have burning a hole in your pocket?

I might go as high as 8, but only if they throw in a good card catalogue.

lol .. tuts tomb would probably be considerably cheaper and easier to make :)

@@ysobel14517 Diocletian Decimal System?

That or even more interesting would be his history of the Roman Civil Wars.

@@MaxwellAerialPhotography But I don't want to be murdered by Livia

Maybe we'll find it one day

Something tells me the Etruscan language shall be deciphered eventually, probably not in a matter of months, but a lot of progress has been made already. And if not Claudius' works, at least something else about the Etruscans will eventually pop up, I'm quite confident.

@@canko15 I bet a lot of these languages will be solved by AI

They found a significant and early piece of the new testament inside a paper mache mask made for an egyptian mummy. They're also putting those carbonized scrolls through a medical scanner and reconstructing the contents.

what about the stuff that was to more than just christianity

Really? That’s heartening that some of this stuff is consistently being rediscovered. Here’s hoping that within my lifetime, we unearth whatever works inspired Lucian of Samosata’s “Vera Historia” (the Vera Historia, despite being a Roman work, somehow managed to resemble a parody of Jules Verne’s works in terms of genre)

​@@525Lines that was shown to be a fraud

Some Sappho was found recently, wrapped 'round a mummy.

I made a video a couple years ago that reached the same conclusion

@toldinstone History is starting to get told

what you mean nothing lasts forever? oh my god what? it can't be? time? no way? i mean, they were slaves for 400 years and never tried to escape until the evil white man set them free? yah history is a joke.

On the other hand, the destruction of the Baghdad Library absolutely was a horrific event that ended centuries of cultural development.

@@toldinstone mind posting a link?

It’s still talked about there today about how much damage the Mongols brought.

@@lenney872 the mongols truly destoryed all middle eastern enlightenment

The destruction of that Library, along with the decay of Mu'tazileh Islam is what lead to the stagnation and decay of Islamic thought to the backwardness it has today: If Mu'tazileh had become the dominant form of Islamic thought, the Islamic World would likely be indistinguishable from the rest of the modern Western world in terms of progression and enlightenment.

The Mongols, nothing good ever came from them, if we could go back and around them from existing the world would likely be a better place

What's holding back progress in the Muslim world has nothing to do with the Mongols and everything to do with modern European colonialism and US imperialism, which have spent the last century consistently overthrowing any progressive Middle Eastern government and often murdering its leaders while supporting the most reactionary political forces because they're the ones who keep their economies privatized so Western capital can dominate and exploit their resources and people. This has been the case in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 80s, Libya, Iraq, Syria (where for the last 12 years the West has been sponsoring al-Qaeda in its war on the progressive, secularist Syrian government), Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and so on. Western imperialism has for decades used Saudi Wahhabism and other regressive political forces as a bludgeon against any progressive and left-wing political force in the Muslim world. Blaming the Mongols for supposedly condemning Muslims to centuries of some inherent backwardness is frankly ignorant and racist toward Muslims, and it ignores the colossal role played by the US, Britain, France and other Western imperialist powers, plus their colonial proxy state in occupied Palestine, in crushing any and all progressive movements in the Muslim world while propping up the most right-wing reactionary forces. And then blaming the Muslim people themselves, who have spent decades being oppressed by right-wing Western puppet regimes, for their own supposed "backwardness". The Mongols didn't destroy Nasserism, the US did. The Mongols didn't lynch Muammar Gaddafi and turn Libya into a Salafist slave state, the US did. The Mongols didn't slaughter millions of Indonesian leftists in the course of a fascist coup in the 1960s, the US did. The Mongols didn't impose a racist colonial apartheid state in the land of Palestine, the US and Europe did. The Mongols didn't bankroll Saudi Wahhabism, the US and Britain did. The Mongols didn't destroy the socialist revolution in Afghanistan, the US did. The Mongols didn't spend the last 12 years arming al-Qaeda in Syria, the US did. The US, the US, the US. The US is what's keeping the Muslim world down, not the Mongols.

This is my most anticipated archeological dig of the century.

Do you know if any excavations are planned? That would be very interesting!!

I'm hoping for one of Diogenes' lost volumes on Ethics.

@@Ybby999 it has been going on for decades, however progress was very slow since all scrolls were carbonized and hence very fragil and unreadable.

@@Ybby999 something something about how archeologists always leave 1/2 of the dig unexcavated in the hopes that future people will have better techniques

Do your best to photo-archive anything "perishable" as soon as possible. I know of a place that lost all of the maps of its water system because they were Diazotypes (or maybe one of the others? It's been a few years since I talked to folks there), and had faded.

@@absalomdraconis some stalwart soul scanned many of them already, they were indexed poorly and some of the scans were done poorly too. I finished most of the scans and re-wrote the index in Excel. Now it is easier to find things. Fortunately they are stored in metal flat files in a good place. Thanks for your suggestions, I'll take all I can get!

@@whirving Thank you for doing that. Some historian some time in the future will need the one nugget from that very book which they only found because of your index. And that will be the final piece of the puzzle to some great historical mystery.

There are *SO* few people who remain alive who can translate extremely old texts. Beyond that, there's obviously ZERO incentive, profit, luxury, nor reward for doing so. Sadly, there's a lot more profit in selling digital phones, rocket parts, clothing, fashion items, video games, weaponry, and fast food. 💪😎✌️ Ya gotta know where humanity's priorities are. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨

@@Novastar.SaberCombat history has no value. whether you know something or don't know something about history will literally make zero difference for humanity. our knowledge of history is more for our own intellectual curiosity which by extension is just entertainment. Same with phones/technology, fast food and clothing. I enjoy learning about Rome and ancient history but let's be honest, if we never learned another thing about history, our world would not change the least

​@@harrywang9375hmmmm

​@harrywang9375 I'm not so sure about that. History repeats itself, humans do not change. Learning from people's past mistakes is very valuable.

@jamesrahe5287 is there anyone translating these parthian texts?

The visual gags are indeed quietly brilliant

Yep, this misinterpretation you talk about is very widespread. When ancient authors mention the supposed "400,000 scrolls" of the library of Alexandria, they are referring to 400,000 _volumina_ (scrolls) and _tabulae_ (tablets); not 400,000 _codices_ (books). Codices can be huge, the Bible, for example, contains 73 individual works yet presents itself as a single Codex. An extreme example is the Codex Gigas written in the XIth century, which contains the entire Bible, the _Etymologae_ of Isidore, Josephus' _Historiae_ , the _Ars Medicinae_ , the Bohemian Chronicles and an extensive Calendar. All of that in a single book.

Even breviaries hold multiple books in a compact form, both in medieval times and today.

The codex was an advance over the scroll, since it allowed "random access" to the information in it: you can go straight to whichever page you want, instead of having to "scroll" or spool the paper from one hand to the other. With computers we have gone backwards. For close reading of a difficult text it's much better now to have a print-out.

​@@faithlesshound5621 untrue. It is possible to hyperlink in an index, and most e-readers (as well as all web browsers) contain a search function for words and phrases.

The codex wasn't a good form for papyrus though, because that material was too brittle to be folded back and forth more than a few times without breaking, especially in dry conditions. Although there are papyrus codices, the codex is only really feasible when made of flexible and durable materials like pachment or (rag) paper.

🙁😣🤪

Wouldn't it be funny if all this was already on the cloud?

So much will disappear without a trace after the internet gets zapped by the next huge geomagnetic solar storm. All that knowledge lost.

​@@tomcollins5112 What a freaking fear!!!, imagine years of valuable work vanish instantly; new fear unlocked and copying everything to physic.

​​@@hadcrio6845 Luckily there are companies working on better optical discs for long term storage. Only problem is that discs are fragile. Even if it lasts for a million years, you gotta keep it in a vault to keep it safe, and nothing is fully safe from natural disasters and the like.

Fortunately, the magnetic tape should generally last a decently long time if kept in climate control, and it's readability will really just depend on getting the right drive- it's still in use as archive media even today.

I mean, many texts were lost due to religious reasons, but there are plenty of other book which were burned for other reasons

@@thegameranch5935 The vast majority of texts were lost due to neglect or lack of percieved importance. Destroying books for ideological reasons only really started happening in the 20th century, when widespread literacy actually made books an ideological threat

Have a look for a novel called The Sword of Pleasure by Peter Green.It's a fictional autobiography of Sulla,apologies if you already know it!

@@fatherhanktree2011 i wasn’t aware of this novel, i will have to check it out. Thank you.

WW2, Napoleon (probably the biggest offender, as he sacked all libraries he found, but wasn't as efficient in preserving books and art when taking it back to France), the 30 years war, the 100 years war, coastal raids...

US Army Airforce inflicted much damage.

​@Channel That's just how airpower was in those days. If you weren't dive bombing or attacking from really low altitude your bombs weren't going to land very accurately. This limited all air forces at that time, not just the USAAF.

Apparently, Monte Cassino's library was evacuated to The Vatican prior to the bombardment. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monte_Cassino#Evacuation_and_treasures

Almost no art piece (of course the Building itself was devastated) was destroyed by the bombing, because they were evacuated either by the germans or the church.

Ikr?? I'm not used to that. That's nice.

the average video won't be saved, though most text is archived somewhere

Reading things like this really make my insides crawl

Please tell me they digitized them.

@@empiricalandinquirical2435 no they are completely lost to the sands of time

Wow why wouldn't they simply donate them to the local library or someplace that would want them???

Thankfully the odds of that being true on any kind of scale are non-existent. Although we are definitely missing some VERY important and influential works, generally speaking, the more popular and good something was, the more likely it was copied. In addition, written works could never really be "culture-changing" level works simply because literacy was too low. It absolutely stings not knowing what we ARE missing though. Like I said, all that is true in general but because of things like destruction of libraries there absolutely have to be examples of greatness that were indeed lost forever.

They were far better than they are portrayed. Obscure facts about the Egyptians and the broader ancient world are deemed too politically incorrect to openly talk about.

@@Channel-sp3fp Can you give an example? Also please don't tell me this is going to be some crazy conspiracy nonsense.

The important classics of the Ancient World did survive: Homer, Vergil, Plato, etc. The problem is that beyond this small circle of critical works, a scattered & random selection of works survived. Think of what the future might think of Modern English Literature if only Shakespeare, Pope, Gibbon, & Hemingway survived: what would they miss by not having examples of Jane Austen, Mark Twain, or Hunter S. Thompson to read? (Just to pick a few names. Most of us could think of one writer or more who never wrote a best seller, yet should survive to be read by generations yet unborn.)

@@Tinil0 That's all it ever is, hence the lack of response but surplus of sole comments.

More than you would think. I read somewhere that a trained scribe could write upwards of 200 lines (of poetry) per hour.

It greatly depends on the quality of the product, the type of scribe, and the handwriting style. At the extreme end, an illiterate scribe copying letters for an ornate de luxe edition of the finest quality could take a team up to a year (including time for illustrating), but simply making a transcript of a book for personal use by a scholar or student would be much faster. In the 13th century it was typical for students to rent books and copy them; copying the (Latin) Bible took such a student 15 months, presumably not working all day at the task. (This last fact from Life in a Medieval City, Joseph and Frances Gies, Harper & Row, New York, 1969.) The infamous Voynich Manuscript, with its shoddy illustrations and made-up text, probably represents about three months of work, and seems to have involved five different scribes. In this case the writers had the advantage of not actually needing to consult a source text; it was almost certainly assembled on the fly to defraud either Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II or the scholar Athanasius Kircher, who had bragged he could decipher any language. (c.f. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bJ2JrayAv7q-iJ8.html)

@@RhetoricaRhamnusia Nice theory, but Rudolf II reigned over 150 years after the Voynich manuscript's likely date from C-14 dating. None of which rules out it being a hoax and possibly assembled as such, but not in the 1570s.

@@RhetoricaRhamnusia By definition a scribe couldn't be illiterate. Unlike some internet writers who use speech to text.

@@brianmccarthy5557 Untrue. I don't know how common it was, but I have definitely heard of scribes who simply copied what was in front of them. Obviously someone writing down what was being spoken would need to be literate, but one need not be able to read and understand what they're writing if they are able to simply reproduce the "markings" on the pages in front of them. If I recall correctly, there has been speculation that some instances of unusual spellings or odd mistranslations could have been the result of a scribe not actually understanding what they were copying, not being sure what the original author had written (mistaking one letter for another for example), so just guessing and guessing incorrectly. I mean, technically I could be a "scribe" for ancient Chinese texts as long as I could accurately copy what was presented to me, even if I had zero understanding of what even a single character meant.

I believe the Getty Museum in California has replicated the architecture and the statuary of the Villa dei Papyri, but is not paying to excavate or conserve the charred papyri themselves. Unfortunately the Villa is in a part of the world where funds for any public project tend to be syphoned off by organised crime. Also, there's a view that ancient remains are best left in the ground.

@@faithlesshound5621 Exactly. God help Campania and it’s problems. Here is to hoping one day soon technology can help crack the code and revitalise interest in the Villa.

Collecting them did not preserve them?

Even more destructive are made-up stories that never had any source materials in the first place. Think "anglo-saxon invasion" and "the Vikings".

​@@Misses-Hippy : Printing them would have preserved the contents, but would do nothing for the originals.

@@absalomdraconis the content is what truly important, yes I agree the lost of original copy would be sad but at least the content lives om

Ironically, Callimachus favoured the small form, so the thing about the tiny fraction surviving seems about right.

Coz those are the only 2 civilization to have existed? LOL.

We're also starting to see lost originals and a constant decline in quality caused by copying copies of copies. Then there's also stuff from the even mid to late 2000's that are simply gone from the internet.

Updates to windows and microsoft office sometimes completely breaks previous versions of document files, too.

ikr i had to rummage through my medicine cabinet for some spare antidepressants just so i could cope..

Huh?

If that were the case, Classical Philologists wouldn't feel the need to turn to French Theories for another five hundred years.

One ancient catalogue that's still extant is the catalogue of the episcopal library of Hippo in Africa. It contains the works of the former bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, which were organized in a systematic manner. You can find the catalogue in the appendix to the Life of St. Augustine by his secretary, Eugippius. The library itself was evacuated to Rome when the Vandals arrived in Northern Africa, where its system of organization was upheld. Interestingly, St. Augustine's works are widely transmitted in two strands: One emerging from the time of first publishing, collected by his contemporary friends and readers (Yes, St. Augustine had subscribers, who had apparently also rung the bell and so received a copy everytime Augustine had published something new), surviving in collective manuscripts where the texts can be read in a chronological order (which we know from his book of auto-scorchers, the Retractationes). The other strand goes back to people who copied his books in the library during the following centuries, so those texts survive in topical collections.

We know that, at least in Alexandria, the library was organized quite efficiently by alphabet and author if I'm not mistaken, and other libraries at Rome, Antioch, Carthage, etc, would have probably followed similar systems to make it easier for somebody to read books. There's also some evidence that libraries would be cordoned off into two main sections, a "Greek" language and a "Latin" language section, so you'd be able to quickly find books in whichever language you were fluent in.

@@HerculesMays Nice! Thank you!

@@HerculesMays They also had Greek translations of Jewish works, according to what I read- it's part of how the Old Testament/ Septuagint came about- Alexandria had an official Jewish Quarter, so I can only assume Jewish scholars worked at, or at least received invitations to the Library- & everyone had to submit to inspections, so any works could be copied.

Where did he get them from?

@@TiberentenTV Ask him.