#ancientmanuscripts — Public Fediverse posts

A vast private collection holds ancient texts across cultures and languages, including humanity’s earliest stories. But should such history belong to one collector—or be returned to its origins?
#AncientManuscripts #CulturalHeritage #HistoryDebate #Archaeology #WorldHistory
Read more:https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/schoyen-collection-20000-ancient-manuscripts-134-countries-120-languages-020944

A 1,500-year-old Byzantine Gospel stunned researchers when its famous purple pages were traced to unexpected materials. Does sacred meaning come from rarity… or from belief?
#ByzantineHistory #AncientManuscripts #HiddenHistory #Archaeology #MedievalArt
Read more:https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/fermented-urine-dye-discovered-one-oldest-illuminated-manuscripts-006247

While most of the news coming about AI is almost universally bad, there are a few good things that AI is actually well suited for, such as transcription of ancient texts:

www.medievalists.net/2026/01/32000-medieval-manuscripts-transcribed-using-ai/

It's worth reading through the article to see how they trained the dataset very narrowly and optimized it for energy usage. Given the decreasing numbers of young scholars going into these disciplines, I have been excited to see how AI affects translation and transcription efforts. While I don't think AI should be used for really...much of anything at all, I think this particular use is a very good one.

#AI #ActuallyGoodUsesForAI #Medievalists #history #ancientManuscripts #news #archaeology #language #translating

OMG THIS IS AMAZING

#OldBooks
#AncientManuscripts
#medieval
#MedievalNerdery
#history
#literature

I'm unclear as to when this all happened, as the Medievalists article is undated (my phone doesn't display a date anyway). If I find out more, I'll amend.

Can't wait to see what tidbits of thought make their way from this find into the world at large.

https://www.medievalists.net/2024/11/lost-medieval-library-found-romanian-church/

EDIT: further info, as promised! https://fedihum.org/@lavaeolus/113533648115575353