Geek alert
Yesterday, my Greek class went on a FIELD TRIP. It was so much fun. Apparently the University of Michigan has the largest papyrus collection in the country (Berkeley claims to have the largest collection, but they count every fragment with an individual number while we piece them together first - so they cheat.) and our teacher took us to the graduate library to take a look at the collection.
It was so fantastic guys. Maybe it's just because I'm a geek, but we got to see bits of scrolls that some random guy wrote over 2000 years ago of a book that people still read and discuss today. That's fascinating.
We saw, among many other things: a scroll of a chapter from Homer's Iliad, a lexicon for Ancient Greek scholars to help them translate from Homeric Greek, a random letter some kid wrote to his mother, a 2000 year old doodle of an elephant. A doodle! Of all the random texts and scraps of papyrus to survive, some guy's DOODLE OF AN ELEPHANT makes it.
We also got to go into the vault. Shh, don't tell anyone, they don't usually let people into the vault. But we are awesome and they let us go (our class is really small - it's Ancient Greek 302, come on). The vault is where they store all of the stuff, and they have to keep it at very specific temperatures and humidity levels to prevent deterioration. We got to see some pretty amazing books in here as well.
I don't know, it was just really great. I'm sure most of you don't give a crap, but wow. It was amazing. Oh! Also, our Greek professor has a papyrus plant in his home, and he trimmed a few stalks to give out to us! So now I have a stalk of papyrus! I could make papyrus paper if I wanted to! I just might try!
It was so fantastic guys. Maybe it's just because I'm a geek, but we got to see bits of scrolls that some random guy wrote over 2000 years ago of a book that people still read and discuss today. That's fascinating.
We saw, among many other things: a scroll of a chapter from Homer's Iliad, a lexicon for Ancient Greek scholars to help them translate from Homeric Greek, a random letter some kid wrote to his mother, a 2000 year old doodle of an elephant. A doodle! Of all the random texts and scraps of papyrus to survive, some guy's DOODLE OF AN ELEPHANT makes it.
We also got to go into the vault. Shh, don't tell anyone, they don't usually let people into the vault. But we are awesome and they let us go (our class is really small - it's Ancient Greek 302, come on). The vault is where they store all of the stuff, and they have to keep it at very specific temperatures and humidity levels to prevent deterioration. We got to see some pretty amazing books in here as well.
I don't know, it was just really great. I'm sure most of you don't give a crap, but wow. It was amazing. Oh! Also, our Greek professor has a papyrus plant in his home, and he trimmed a few stalks to give out to us! So now I have a stalk of papyrus! I could make papyrus paper if I wanted to! I just might try!