Oldest surviving manuscripts of Ancient Greece and Rome
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| [[Cornelius Gallus]] is often cited as the [[oldest surviving]] [[manuscript]] of [[Latin poetry]]. | [[Cornelius Gallus]] is often cited as the [[oldest surviving]] [[manuscript]] of [[Latin poetry]]. | ||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
| + | *[[The oldest written manuscripts]] | ||
| *[[Discovered text (archaeology)]] | *[[Discovered text (archaeology)]] | ||
| *[[Manuscript]] | *[[Manuscript]] | ||
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Apart from the charred papyrus fragments recovered in Herculaneum at the Villa of the Papyri and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, not one single manuscript from Ancient Greece and Rome survived.
The main reason for this is Papyrus which has a life of at most a century or two in relatively moist Italian or Greek conditions; only those works copied onto parchment, usually after the general conversion to Christianity, have survived, and by no means all of those.
- The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Greek library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum.
Cornelius Gallus is often cited as the oldest surviving manuscript of Latin poetry.
See also
- The oldest written manuscripts
- Discovered text (archaeology)
- Manuscript
- Earliest known art
- Extant literature
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